I prefer to put this in a way that people can “appreciate.”
Going off the UK’s NHS cost per person covered number in 2022 of £2700 you could extrapolate… doodoodoo that it would cost approximately $1.2T to have full healthcare coverage guaranteed and available for every single American. Based on 2022 population of 338M people, approximately. And yes, I rounded up to 1.2T.
That’s pretty close to 10% of the way to covering a year of “American NHS” and all we got was a bunch of dead people, rich CEOs, and definitely not improved health for anyone. And 18 months of funding another war.
It’s probably also worth mentioning that doing a proper NHS here and in the process of course dissolving Medicare, Medicaid and the VA health department would end up with like 2x of the required $1.2T. Medicare alone approaches $1T yearly. The problem of course is capitalism incentivizing graft and scams of all types jacking that number up.
Anyway, just interesting to see what we apparently ACTUALLY care about. It isn’t the lives of people here or in Ukraine (or anywhere). It’s just about enriching capitalists and politicians who are along for the scam. Also interesting to see how cheap it would be to fix things if “done properly.” I’m not one to overly focus on dollar amounts, it’s all bullshit obviously, but liberals (including conservatives) do care about the made up number go up. If they really wanted made up number to to down it’s pretty easy. Stop funding wars and (at a minimum) abolish privatized health insurance/healthcare. Move to an NHS-style socialized system.
I mostly wrote this for myself just to put things into perspective since the numbers can get lost and muddied due to rhetoric from liberals filled with lies. “We can’t afford it!” Well, you have no problem affording twice the amount in a wasteful current system… plus an additional $100M on top to bomb people across the world. We can afford anything, but they aren’t interested in making material conditions better for anyone. Only worse. No healthcare here, and bombs for over there. We can’t afford life here, but we can afford death everywhere else.
This country is a joke.
What does 'graft' mean? This is twice this week I've seen it in a medical context like this.
It probably means using your position and authority as a medical professional to over prescribe for the sake your bottom line.
The problem of course is capitalism incentivizing graft and scams of all types jacking that number up.
I think in this case it means bribery.
That makes sense. The other story was about corruption in the medical field in China.
Just coincidence that it came up around medicine. It's an old word, not used a whole lot anymore, but if you watch movies from back in the day it was a lot more popular.
It's basically the same as the word "grift" (when used correctly. A lot of people just use that constantly now days for "person doing a thing I personally don't like"). But it deals specifically with government officials who have power and abuse it to get personal gain...usually money in the form of kickbacks or whatever.
Kickbacks is another old word but people still understand that one, I think? Basically money or favors received as a result of doing something favorable for someone or a corporation or whatever. Basically more indirect bribery, but it can range depending on usage (like grift!) from like "you vote for this and we'll dedicate the building to you" (pretty benign) to like "you vote for this and once my company's stock goes up 500% I'll make sure your kids get nice homes." Something like that.
This is the Wikipedia definition of graft btw. No, I didn't look this up beforehand. I learned it from The Simpsons (and some history books, but mostly the Simpsons like 30 years ago)
"Graft, as understood in American English, is a form of political corruption defined as the unscrupulous use of a politician's authority for personal gain. Political graft occurs when funds intended for public projects are intentionally misdirected in order to maximize the benefits to private interests."
Graft can also, of course, refer to a medical procedure such a skin graft. Moving skin from one part of the body to another to recover from something like burns. You can also use it for non-medical, non-body related stuff and it's used the same way basically. Probably mostly used now days in a medical sense though.
I feel like graft might just be an autocorrect gaff of grift, though.
Other way around. Graft has been used (the political way) since mid 1800s. Grift didn't show up until early 1900s.
According to our good dictionary friends anyway. Etymology nerds.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grift
"Grift may have come from graft, a slightly older word meaning "to acquire dishonestly.""
There's a bunch of other sources saying something generally the same if you care enough to go down rabbit holes.
Is the United States government donating weapons to Ukraine, no strings attached, or is it selling them?
US is just dumping weapons in Ukraine and doesn't even know where most of them are going, all of this is coming straight out of the pockets of Americans https://archive.ph/NSfx0
Looks like they're using lend-lease, which is just a fancy term for selling them on credit.
So Ukraine will be in debt to American weapons companies for years to come?
Weapons makers, financial institutions, banks - you name it. I'm sure you have already heard the tale of privatisation.gov.ua
They use the American spelling (maybe that's significant?): https://privatization.gov.ua/en/map-of-objects/
25% water, 25% sugar, 25% amphetamine, 25% PCP - "A NEW MANLY DRINK FOR TRUE AMERICANS"
sounds very sugary and spiked with every stimulant know to mankind
This does mostly mean loaning money to buy from US arms companies, which means more jobs and growth for that very vital and noble sector.
My impression is that the whole military industrial complex basically exists in order to siphon taxes away from stuff they're meant for such as building infrastructure, providing healthcare, and other public services. Instead, the money goes into the pockets of the oligarchs who own the war industry, and proxy wars like Ukraine are essential for keeping the scam running.
Remember when the US razed Iraq to the ground and UNICEF said "We're looking at atleast $7b to avoid mass starvation of Iraqis" and then the US offered like 1.6b with 2/3rds of it going to Kuwait?
I haven't seen those, but deficit in Russia is around 2% of the GDP, and economy growth this year is projected at 4.9%. So, clearly whatever the war spending is, it's not affecting Russian economy the same way US war spending is affecting the economy where deficit is now astronomical and GDP growth is around only 2.4%.
That I knew about. I was just wondering how efficient the war effort is, considering that the narrative liberals have been spewing is that the war has been 'disastrous' for Russia. Seems like they are doing much better while spending less, what with their defense line, which seems much more sustainable in a war of attrition.
But what do I know.
I agree with that, it seems that Russian economy is in a much better state than US or Europe at the moment. I think big part of the reason is that Russia inherited state owned military industrial complex from USSR and most of it is still publicly owned. So, weapons production in Russia is much cheaper than in the west because you don't have to go through private sector for anything essential.
