universal healthcare

[Jester]

And, you will starve to death, or get killed while you sleep in your card board box. No problem.

Life sucks when you try to spend your every waking moment avoiding taxes, rather than trying to maximize your happiness. So it is with income, so it is with the individual mandate.

I know I've had it drummed into my head that driving is a privilege, not a right.

And if you listen to the right blogosphere, health care is the same. But, as Pete rightly points out, that ship sailed long ago. Medicare and Medicaid are already huge. Getting rid of them is politically impossible, and would have catastrophic consequences for those who depend on them. The real question is how these services can be provided at lower cost, or for more people at around the same cost. That's what this bill is about.

Getting back to your other question, about Obama care funding... The Lie of Fiscal Responsibility.

If we grant that extra $208 billion in expenses, that amounts to a total of 5.9 billion dollars per year in extra deficits. You could fund that for the next century on the DoD's budget for a single year. It would amount to less than a 1% increase in current annual health care costs. It would no longer save money, but it's hardly a beacon for fiscal irresponsibility - that would be the Iraq war, and the Bush tax cuts, each of which go through that amount of money in about a week.

-Jester

Afterthought: Neato graphic, via DeLong: