Originally Posted by
Will
Pres what you say would make sense if there were jobs for everyone, but that isn't the case. You're right that some people don't want to work, but there are plenty of people out there who would love to work but can't get a job as the country stands (this applies to the UK as much as the US) I don't know what the figures are over there, but here we have something like 2.5 million unemployed and 500,000 vacancies. Even if you could fill them all tomorrow it still leaves two million unemployed.
For all their rhetoric about creating jobs, it suits the government (and their backers in big business) to have a large pool of unemployed for the simple fact that it weakens unions. No one will dare strike if they can be sacked and easily replaced by someone on the dole queue.
Under the US system (pre-bill) uninsured people if they become ill, would be for all intents and purposes living in the dark ages when it came to healthcare. Also, the bill closes a lot of loopholes when it comes to insurance practices (such as making them take people with pre-existing conditions) that otherwise would have been ignored.
You should hardly worry about free handouts to banks or the unemployed when the US gives free handouts to other states, most notably Israel to the tune of 3 billion dollars a year. And what does Israel give the US in return? Stirring up trouble with settlement building, giving Bin Laden all the excuses he needs to launch terror attacks. It's quite possible that he would carry on even if Israel was cut off, but even if he did, you would be cutting out a key plank of his propaganda by letting Israel sink. If the US supported Britain to the extent it has supported Israel, we would likely still have an Empire today. Of course, no US politician will dare to defy the Israeli lobby, and this is at the core of the problem. Until you do, you will never see a foreign policy that puts America first.
Ask yourself this: what would really happen if the US stopped fighting those wars? would the Taliban invade the US? Would Bin Laden secretly travel to Washington and attack the White House? The US could easily cut defence spending by at least half, and still be #1 in the world militarily. A large portion of what you already spend goes into the pockets of various corporations and never to the services themselves. It is these same corporations that drive the US into wars it doesn't need to fight, purely to boost their profits. No country in the world today poses a serious threat to the US barring nukes, and no one will use them.
There is one other thing which you have overlooked concerning the costs of healthcare. Improving coverage will both improve morale in the workplace and drastically cut the amount of time lost to illness/injury, resulting in a significant boost to productivity. Not everyone without coverage is unemployed.