How to cut one trillion dollars from the deficeit
Two expenditure programs really stand out: defense and Medicare.
But simply cutting the defense budget in half (including the hidden costs such as veterans benefits, CIA paramilitary black ops, homeland security) we'd save 500 billion dollars. Congress is presently okaying expenditures for planes that not one branch of the service want to have. This is pork barrel logic run amok.
The immense problem with Medicare is that the expenditures are entirely misdirected. Ninety perceont of Medicare expenditures go to sustaining the lives of beneficiaries who will not live for one year! Extreme measures of life support - not new and improved body parts - such as hip and knee replacements or organ transplants, or heart surgery, all of which American Medicine does a most excellent job of repairing.
If we were to cut expenditures that go only to prolong life of those who no longer are living in anything other than a mere technical sense, by 2/3, we would lop off another $537 billion from the deficit.
Had these two cost cutting measures been put into effect for FY 2010, the deficit woutd have been $123 million rather than $1.5 trillion.
Why can't our political leaders do the math? Who in the world do they have advising them? Where is the press in all this. If the American people had these facts at their disposal, health care in this country could be delivered at a much lower cost.
Furthermore, health care can be made safer. About six months ago the Boston Globe ran an article showing that mortality rates for inpatients could be reduced by 75% merely by having hospital personell WASH THEIR HANDS, as we require of workers in the fast food service industry. Who coulda knowed?
When the facts are presented this starkly, there is no room for debate. But the facts, and the solutions speak for themselves.
Mark Raymond Ganzer
Barrington, Illinois
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