There is a good reason the term 'entitlements' is used when discussing Medi-care, Social Security and the other pitiful scraps that Washington deems to toss our way.
Need I say it? I guess I do - They are called 'entitlements' because we, the people who are taxed and who then provide them, are ENTITLED to them.
Not only the scraps we currently snatch and scurry back to our stool in the corner with but much, much more. A tenth of the current bail-out/sellout package would pay for universal health care for every American. Why aren't we getting it?
The USA is the only modern industrial nation that does NOT have universal health care.
Speaking of which, McCain and other Republicrats like to boast about the American worker being the most industrious, hardest-working, blah, blah. They like to polish the apple when talking to the cogs in the wheels of industry. (That's the way politicians operate; they butter you up before they stick you in the roaster.)
Do you ever wonder why the Western Europeans can't match that boast about 'hard-working Americans'? It's simple; Western Europeans have on average 4 weeks of paid vacation. They also have sick days, maternity days for both parents, personal days and also public and religious holidays OFF - mostly with pay. And despite the fact that European workers don't match American workers in productivity, they have universal health care, tuition-free university education,free trade-schooling and the list of public entitlements goes on and on.
We're sold the story that America is the richest nation on earth yet Americans don't have universal health care or publically funded tertiary education programs no msatter how hard they work. A large and growing percentage can't afford healthcare at all.
What gives?
Not the trickle-down Reaganite policies that have destroyed the entitlements, social services programs that had been put into place by the New Deal and LBJ's Great Society, that's for certain.
