Will we ever learn?

It seems the answer is "no".

The question is, will the American people ever learn that the answer to all questions and needs is not, in fact, to throw money at the problem.

Two examples come to mind recently.

One headline I saw this week points out the President Obama is requesting $634 billion over the next 10 years for a "health care overhaul".

What a mistake.

We don't need to throw even MORE money at our health care system. Doctors and hospitals and insurance companies have taken too much money from the system already.

Money INTO the system isn't the issue. Too much of our home incomes and national wealth is already spent on health care. (And defense, too, but that's another article).

What we need to do with our health care system is what the rest of the world has already successfully done--and that is, take the profit--the ugly, fat, oversized, bloated, killing profit--out of health care in the United States.

But it won't happen.

We don't have the will or the understanding to make this happen.

We’ll never get the health care system we need because the American answer to health care is to throw more money at it when what we really need to do is take the profit out of health care, the way the rest of the world has done. Everywhere but here in the US. We love profits. We love corporations. We’re greedy.

And stupid.

The other news note I saw this week was that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just got back from the Middle East and is asking for--did you see this?--900 million dollars to rebuild the Gaza Strip.

Are you effin' kidding me?

In the first place, continuing to support the madness that continues to go on in the Middle East just makes us ridiculous enablers. Shooting, killing and blowing each other up in the Middle East should stop, period. Everyone would agree to that. Throwing money at rebuilding that mess again and again just allows for it to go on.

Years ago, when we used to have money in the United States, this wouldn't have made sense, either. But now that we're either near-broke or financially bankrupt (and it's hard to argue we're not), it's beyond our capacity. We can't afford it any longer, clearly.

We're broke, folks.

We can't any longer afford to throw money--big, small or whatever--at our problems.

We can't be the drunken sailor with our money--and our future--any longer.



Link to stories described above:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/obama_budget
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090224/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_us