US spending on the war in Ukraine has already reached $135 billion according to CSIS
US spending on the war in Ukraine has already reached $135 billion according to CSIS
An additional $24 billion has been requested for the war in Ukraine. This is vital for both military operations and humanitarian relief, but a disappointing Ukrainian counteroffensive makes politics more difficult.
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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.
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.
It probably means using your position and authority as a medical professional to over prescribe for the sake your bottom line.
That makes sense. So it's a particular type of medical scam.
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.