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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 11/15/09

Our Health System is More Deadly Than Taliban

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The US Heath System Kills More US Veterans than the Taliban Does Our Combat Troops

The Obama Administration Never Defined the Mission.

After eight years nobody could produce a reason for being in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden had left years ago.
Months ago, I suggested conscripting the health insurance executives and using them to replace our troops in Afghanistan.
Recently, the President vetoed four plans to reinforce the troops in Afghanistan.

Obama eyeing host of Afghan choices, Anne Gearan, AP

By 19 December he will announce his new policy. Cut and run appeals to me, but I like my original plan better.
Since military spending constitutes 51% of our national budget, eliminating that could be a boon for our economy.
When I worked for the DoD, they insisted on a mission statement and a report on my project. To justify my fee, it was the least I could do.

It Is Disgusting, but the Corporations Own the Country

Long ago [1976] Frank Church's investigation found the real power rested with a 'second government' using COINTELPRO to control the media and public information. Between then and now the power of this 'government' has increased enormously. They have become so arrogant they openly kick sand in the public face. The citizens are so fearful they never mount a meaningful protest.
Would-be reformers hold back from directly confronting the real leaders. To do so might lead to a political death or a real one.
Merely changing the faces of the puppets, who claim to be in charge, changes nothing. Appeals to common sense, fair play and justice mean nothing to a brainwashed public.
Ideological purists like Dennis Kucinich provide excellent role models for children who never grow up. In "All the King's Men" Willie Stark said that good can only come from evil. Willie was a grown-up.
George Bush created a dictatorship as evil as can be. We have incorporated this evil everywhere. The right hands can employ this evil for reform.

Just about the most evil thing we do is to ignore the health of our veterans. Uninsured Veterans, Elyse Siegel, HuffPo

According to a study released by the HarvardMedicalSchool, 2,266 veterans under the age of 65 died last year as a result of not having health insurance. Researchers emphasize that "that figure is more than 14 times the number of deaths (155) suffered by U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2008, and more than twice as many as have died (911 as of Oct. 31) since the war began in 2001."

Lacking health insurance 1.46 million working-age veterans all suffered reduced access to care. As a consequence, preventable deaths among them amounted to six per a day.

"Like other uninsured Americans, most uninsured vets are working people -- too poor to afford private coverage but not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid or means-tested VA care," said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a professor at Harvard Medical School. [...]

Dr. David Himmelstein, the co-author of the report and associate professor of medicine at Harvard, commented, "On this Veterans Day we should not only honor the nearly 500 soldiers who have died this year in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the more than 2,200 veterans who were killed by our broken health insurance system. That's six preventable deaths a day."

The study's authors warn that the health care legislation "would do virtually nothing for the uninsured until 2013" and would "leave at least 17 million uninsured over the long run when reform kicks in," leaving many veterans still without care.

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Born a month before Pearl Harbor, I attended world events from an early age. My first words included Mussolini, Patton, Sahara and Patton. At age three I was a regular listener to Lowell Thomas. My mom was an industrial nurse a member of the (more...)
 
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