Health Care

[Cleo's Mom 257]

18 year old preganant girl must get a job. I know many pregnant women who worked till the baby was born. If she is homeless, she may sleep at any of the shelters in her state until she saves enough to rent a room in a nice home with someone.Who do you think subsidizes shelters? The government! Rent a room for $100 a week?? And where is she going to work and pay for child care and be able to afford $100/week? She recieves food stamps, so that will keep her from being hungry. I see rooms for rent all over the newspaper for less than $100. a week, all utilities and furnishings included, and I live in CT. She takes Multivitamins every day ($5.00) a bottle at CVS, and if she has any problems, she may walk into any ER in her town. They will not turn her away. Or, she could apply for medicaid. Medicaid is a government subsidized program. You know, the HC program that we ALREADY have set up for the uninsured. When the baby comes, and she can not afford to care for it, she may give it up for adoption.Of course she's not going to be able to afford to take care of it. She's 18, homeless and jobless. If she chooses to keep her baby, then she must also accept that responsiblity to care for him or her.Oh, so after 9 months of pregnancy and labor she has to give up the baby after you forced her to have it? She must be willing to work full time and pay someone to sit with the baby while she works. Yeah, there are all kinds of nice rooms for less than $100/week and people who will watch your child for almost nothing so that you can work at your minimum wage jobs and save up for that house in the suburbs with the white picket fence while going to school so that you can get that well paid job with benefits. Yes, life will be hard financially, but these are the consequences for having sex outside of marriage.

And what are the consequences for the guy who got her pregnant? He's probably long gone at this point.

But wait. She will want to live in a 2 bedroom apartment, and she will want to have cable TV and that's not included with the room, and wait, she will expect to be able to still be entertained with eating out and movies once a week like it was at home with her parents before they kicked her out. And, oh yeah, she won't be satisfied with working at Kmart. She needs the government to pay for her to go to school, cause she doesn't want to sacrifice or anything and put $25.00 a week away for a CNA certification class offered at the local Red cross for $800. If she did, then she could earn at least $6.00 more an hour. But no, that would take too long to save up. Almost a year or so.

Believe me, she will be fine without any government assistance. It's called 'work', and there are plenty of jobs out there. If you're not willing to work, then you can not have the things you will need.

But you already expanded your government assistance from food stamps to include medicaid. But there is no way she will have enough money to pay rent and child care and go to school. It's not realistic and you always paint these unrealistic scenarios.

[pattygreen 5]

Who do you think subsidizes shelters? The government! Rent a room for $100 a week?? And where is she going to work and pay for child care and be able to afford $100/week?

In my town, the shelter is run by a church group and it is sbsidized with donations from the community. She stays there while she is pregnant and saves $100.00 for her room with the job she got at kmart. She makes more than $100. a week at her job, so since she doesn't have to buy food, and all her utilities are included with her room, she can save the rest. She'll need it for her CNA course. My friend worked at Walmart and made $300. a week full time. Her room she's renting is only 1/3 of that. She can pay a sitter with some of her paycheck also. But no need to worry, she has gone to CNA school and has gotten her certification in only 8 weeks. She can now make 15.00 an hour instead of 8.00. Now she can afford to save for nursing school.

Medicaid is a government subsidized program

I know. A HC program. So tell me, why do we need to have another one?

Of course she's not going to be able to afford to take care of it. She's 18, homeless and jobless.

She's not homeless, she's renting a nice room in a home for $100. a week. She also works as a CNA now making $15.00 an hour. She got her cert. as soon as she found out she was pregnant (in 8 weeks) and needed to do something to better herself financially.

Oh, so after 9 months of pregnancy and labor she has to give up the baby after you forced her to have it?

No. If she feels that she can afford to care for the child she can. If not, she may have to put it up for adoption. Sad, but that's the consequences for having sex outside of marriage. Some consequences in life can be really hard. It was tough, but better than murdering the baby who did not have any choice in this situation the 2 people got themselves into.

Yeah, there are all kinds of nice rooms for less than $100/week and people who will watch your child for almost nothing so that you can work at your minimum wage jobs and save up for that house in the suburbs with the white picket fence while going to school so that you can get that well paid job with benefits.

There are all kinds of rooms for about $100. a week. I looked in the paper just today and saw 13 rooms for rent in my area alone. I even saw 6 effieciency apts for around $500. a month. Don't forget now, she's making between 14 and 15 an hour at the nursing home now that she spent 8 weeks at school and bettered herself financially. As a CNA, she now gets medical benefits. She can afford it, and childcare, too.

And what are the consequences for the guy who got her pregnant? He's probably long gone at this point.

Well, she can take him to court for child support. That will help her as well. It should even cover all her daycare expenses, so that frees up alot of her income for saving for school.

But you already expanded your government assistance from food stamps to include medicaid. But there is no way she will have enough money to pay rent and child care and go to school. It's not realistic and you always paint these unrealistic scenarios.

She doesn't need the medicaid. She can go to any ER and get the care she needs. If she's making $13.-15 an hour she can afford the room and the daycare. You're the one who is unrealistic in thinking she needs to be assisted cause she just won't be able to do it without the governments help.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

Again, you always paint everything in black & white terms. And simplistic, unrealistic solutions.

You have all the solutions for unwed, pregnant teens and for the elderly who need 24/7 care and for all the economic problems this country faces, etc..

You should run for public office. Why limit all these GREAT ideas to this forum? If you believe you have the solutions, then get elected and start enacting them.

[pattygreen 5]

Again, you always paint everything in black & white terms. And simplistic, unrealistic solutions.

You have all the solutions for unwed, pregnant teens and for the elderly who need 24/7 care and for all the economic problems this country faces, etc..

You should run for public office. Why limit all these GREAT ideas to this forum? If you believe you have the solutions, then get elected and start enacting them.

Just what was unrealistic about that scenerio? That a pregnant 18 year old could never find a room for about $100. a week? That she couldn't get a job at K -mart or CVS? That she couldn't get a cert. in a field and better herself financially? That she couldn't pay for child care with a Kmart job? That she couldn't get a pay raise and medical ins. with a better job in her new field? Or do you just want to believe that everyone out there really needs the government to assist them with their handouts?

The whole point of that was to show you that people CAN get by if they had to without the government programs. If the programs weren't there, what would they do? Die in the streets? What did people do before the government programs were instated and all this debt was run up that we can't afford? They fended for themselves, they relied on family more, they worked harder, they used their brains and came up with solutions to their dilemmas, they were motivated to better themselves, they were INdependant , and they survived.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

Just what was unrealistic about that scenerio? That a pregnant 18 year old could never find a room for about $100. a week? Yes, it just isn't that easy. Most are with roommates and I doubt many would want to share a room with a mom and crying infant. That she couldn't get a job at K -mart or CVS? That she couldn't get a cert. in a field and better herself financially? That she couldn't pay for child care with a Kmart job? No, private childcare is very expensive. That she couldn't get a pay raise and medical ins. with a better job in her new field? Working and going to school would require additional child care and additional expenses. You must think K-Mart pays a lot!! Or do you just want to believe that everyone out there really needs the government to assist them with their handouts? I just want it available for those who need it. It's called helping the least among us. Yes, some abuse the system, but not nearly in the way or as much that corporations abuse corporate welfare. I NEVER hear you railing about THAT, which costs way more than public welfare. I have provided the statistics on this in other posts.

The whole point of that was to show you that people CAN get by if they had to without the government programs. If the programs weren't there, what would they do? Die in the streets?Yes, people do die in the streets. My city just had a vigil to honor all the homeless people who died last year. There were many. What did people do before the government programs were instated and all this debt was run up that we can't afford? People weren't as mobile and didn't move around the country for jobs. We had a more agricultural economy and people did have families closer then. That is not true now. There are more dysfunctional families. We can't go back to that way of life, it doesn't exist. We have to be realistic about what family life is now, not yearn for yester-year. They fended for themselves, they relied on family more, they worked harder, they used their brains and came up with solutions to their dilemmas, they were motivated to better themselves, they were INdependant , and they survived.

And people did die then, and younger too. We didn't have social security, medicare and medicaid and more people were plunged into poverty. These programs have helped lift people out of poverty.

[pattygreen 5]

It isn't one program as some people seem to think. That portion of the pie chart includes a lot of programs. And yeah, it's approximately the 3rd largest piece of the pie. So why does everybody who complains about taxes act like it is the reason that they pay taxes - or the primary reason they pay taxes. It isn't.

That's because it is the part that people feel is unfair to them. Defense is a big portion of the spending, but it is needed and most want to pay for security to our country. General costs are expected, but 'giving' our money away to others just because they are poorer than some is unfair. If they don't like their financial situation, they should do something to change it themselves, not depend on the government (which is the people) to keep them content. Those that are mentally incapable and don't have family to help them need help, most do not. Most can get up every morning and work and manage a paycheck and save towards a worthy goal by denying themselves some luxuries in life to get ahead. They usually choose not to, and that's their choice. They should not receive a handout because they chose that lifestyle.

I can give you example after example of people that I know personally who receive some form of government assistance who could help themselves instead, but it's there, so why should they? Too many examples. If I can give these examples, I'm sure everyone can. This shows me that the government is enabling people to be dependant upon them.

Also, it's not just the welfare to society that is bankrupting us, it's the wasteful spending on projests that each state should raise the funds for themselves. Why should I, in CT have to pay for a park in Oregon, or for Health insurance for all Nebraskans, etc.?

[pattygreen 5]

Yes, it just isn't that easy. Most are with roommates and I doubt many would want to share a room with a mom and crying infant.

Then she would have to find one who would.

No, private childcare is very expensive.

I don't agree. I can find someone to watch my grandson for 3 or 4 bucks an hour, and I live in CT. Remeber, she's making !4. an hour as a CNA. She can do it. Do the math.

Working and going to school would require additional child care and additional expenses. You must think K-Mart pays a lot!!

Kmart pays $8.00 an hour. X 40 =$320. gross. She only pays $100. a week for her room. That leaves her at least 180. a week for her child care. But remember, she only worked at Kmart while she was pregnant, and didn't need care for a child. She went to school for 8 weeks while she was pregnant and became a CNA. After she delivered the baby, she was working at the nursing home making twice as much because she realized she was in a predicament when she found out she was pregnant and did something about it.

Corporate welfeare is just as bad. Just because I haven't touched on that subject doesn't mean that I favor it, for I don't.

BTW, corporations dont get taxed. They give the tax payment to the American people in the cost of their product or service. This is why they should not recieve any funding from the government. We already give them enough.

We didn't have social security, medicare and medicaid and more people were plunged into poverty. These programs have helped lift people out of poverty.

I am not saying that we shouldn't help some people. I'm saying that we have gone overboard in the other direction. We are to the point of making people dependant on the government. There is a middle ground that can be reached. When a nation becomes bankrupt and can't even keep up with the interest on it's loans and is starting to not be able to find someone who will lend to them anymore, we have BIG probleams. When they spend more than they take in and can't swim anymore and are sinking fast, there needs to be some cutting out of the give aways. Dontcha think?

[BJean 16]

patty: "I can give you example after example of people that I know personally who receive some form of government assistance who could help themselves instead, but it's there, so why should they? Too many examples. If I can give these examples, I'm sure everyone can. This shows me that the government is enabling people to be dependant upon them."

Well I cannot give you ONE example!! You live in Connectiut and I live in Texas. Go figure.

I believe that we have had a tremendous problem with generations depending on welfare in the past. We have cleaned it up considerably. There are more programs that actually help people get jobs and housing that they can afford and medical care instead of merely giving people an unaccounted for handout, like we used to.

Our far bigger tax burden is the horrendous military mess we're in in the Middle East. The war in Iraq is costing you big bucks and why wouldn't you rather have your tax dollars go to helping people who are down and out in the USA than dropping bombs on random unfortunates in a foreign country? In the first case, we are bound to realize a very positive effect on our society and in the other, the wars, we gain nothing.

Sure we say we're protecting the U.S. because that's the only way we can sell it to the gullible people who live with the fear mongering Washington dishes out. But it is an economical thing more than it is a mission for peace and we pay out of our pocketbooks each and everyday for something that represents death to American soldiers and death to many people who mean us no harm - the innocents in the line of fire.

We can fight terrorism without bombing an entire country. After all, Bin Laden was supposedly in Afghanistan and we never found him. His organization has become bigger and stronger while we've fiddled in Iraq and fought an unwinable war in Afghanistan. And you and I are asked to pay billions upon billions of the dollars we work hard for each and every day to accomplish virtually nothing over there - and our dead and wounded just keep piling up.

Edited January 5, 2010 by BJean

[Cleo's Mom 257]

There is far more waste in corporate welfare and military spending and the latter does not make us safer and no, I don't want to pay for it.

Wasted Words, Wasted Dollars

By Steve Cobble

Special to Roll Call

June 1, 2009, 1:25 p.m.

Latest News

As families across America struggle to trim their monthly budgets, they’re unlikely to cut back on milk and eggs in order to buy a second Jet Ski. Yet Blue Dog Democrats recently did something similar by cutting $10 billion out of the $540 billion in domestic spending proposed by President Obama, while turning a blind eye to nearly $664 billion in defense spending that independent reports show is rife with billions in wasted taxpayer dollars.

Those on the political left disagree with Blue Dogs on numerous issues — the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, health care reform, seersucker suits — but elected officials of every political stripe should be reaching across party lines to eliminate waste in federal spending, make government run more efficiently and save taxpayers some money. Yet the Blue Dogs constantly undermine their own motto of fiscal discipline by ignoring the hundreds of billions of dollars in wasteful Pentagon spending, helping neither troops nor taxpayers nor our grandchildren. This is especially true after so many years where military spending was the major growth area in the budget.

Last year, the Government Accountability Office’s annual review of the top Pentagon programs uncovered nearly $300 billion in cost overruns. Numerous GAO reports have shown how the most expensive defense programs have failed to deliver on even modest expectations.

Consider one big example, the Joint Strike Fighter, a plane originally conceived as a cost-saving fighter jet for the Air Force, Marines and Navy. Widely acknowledged as the most expensive weapons program in history, the JSF’s life-cycle cost will add up to some $1 trillion — a cost roughly equivalent to this year’s stimulus package. Yet GAO reports show that the JSF has exceeded its original budget by nearly 50 percent, due to multiple scheduling delays brought on by engine failures, electrical malfunctions and unsafe designs. And after years of delays, military experts aren’t even sure when the first JSF will roll off the production line. Whenever that is, by then the price tag will be huge.

America isn’t going to be challenged in dogfights anytime soon. We face much more immediate threats: hundreds of thousands of workers losing their jobs every month, millions uninsured, a housing collapse, global warming, a ballooning deficit. Yet, instead of eliminating the Joint Strike Fighter and saving taxpayers a bundle, the Pentagon just accelerated the program, adding several billion dollars to next year’s budget.

The Pentagon accelerated other defense boondoggles with questionable utility and enormous price tags, including the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ships, whose cost has more than doubled to an eye-popping $500 million a copy. The Pentagon also staved off expected cuts of its gold-plated DDG-1000 submarines, which cost an incredible $3.3 billion each. The GAO has said that number could climb to $5 billion. And military experts agree that the United States faces no credible threats from any enemy navy in the foreseeable future.

Failing defense contracts don’t do our troops any favors and drain hundreds of billions of dollars out of taxpayers’ wallets. Those that protect these wasteful programs aren’t supporting our military — they’re promoting the equivalent of the Navy’s infamous $600 toilet seat. It’s fiscal insanity, plain and simple.

In the face of numerous crises at home and abroad, we need to put tired dogmas to bed. Republicans and Democrats — including the Blue Dogs — should remember that fiscal discipline is just a trite phrase unless it includes the Pentagon, too, where waste is commonly acknowledged but rarely weeded out. That's because everyone is always too quick to cut domestic spending.

Add to this the $18 billion that went unaccounted for by Halliburton years ago in Iraq and barely got coverage in the media. I'm still waiting for someone to be held accountable.

At least Pres. Obama has taken steps to eliminate some of the wasteful spending on unnecessary military toys.

The poor are easy targets to berate and criticize. And characterize as lazy, shiftless, unambitious and leeches on society. They don't have many advocates or lobbyists or those who will speak out on their behalf.

But big corporations and military contractors - well they have many lobbyists and we all pay for it and it costs us WAY MORE than what we spend on the poor.

Edited January 5, 2010 by Cleo's Mom

[pattygreen 5]

For once, I agree with you. Government is spending, no, wasting, far too much money. But, I thought you just loved the BIG government and all that they do.

I am all for putting our tax dollars into military defense and even war, but, I'm against the waste no matter where it is.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

For once, I agree with you. Government is spending, no, wasting, far too much money. But, I thought you just loved the BIG government and all that they do.

I am all for putting our tax dollars into military defense and even war, but, I'm against the waste no matter where it is.

I never referred to it as big government, that is your term. And bush is the one who expanded goverment with the hastily created Homeland Security (btw - homeland is a term used by Hitler) - one of the biggest expansions in decades.

[~Michelle~ 0]

I should not have to pay for anyone elses rent, utilities, medical care, child care, transportation , job training or schooling. I will say that since food is a daily essential, food stamps are a good thing. Those who don't have enough money to eat should be helped. But, if they are buying cigarettes or alcohol or drugs, they should not get help. Peeing in a cup should be a must for anyone receiving food stamps. They make employees do it to keep their jobs so that they could pay for the food stamps for those who don't work, so why not for those who receive the stamps?

I agree 100%.

I also believe some kind of community service should be mandatory after collecting welfare for so long.

Welfare should be something to help people get back on their feet, not something to live on.

[BJean 16]

And Michelle, that's what the government programs are designed to do. There isn't the age-old stereotypical scene of able-bodied people lined up with their hands out while the government just crosses their palms with cash without some accountability required.

We're repeated the story of welfare fraud so many times it has become a mantra. Sure there's fraud in nearly every program we support with our tax dollars, but that doesn't mean that the programs aren't working for the greater good. We always need to b vigilent and working to keep any government run program or grant or subsidy honest.

But too many people believe that the programs that help individuals and families are just passing out cash with no real benefit to society. That's not true. And no matter how much we all want to believe that everyone who accepts help is scamming the system, it just isn't true.

Now explain to me how spending the trillions on weapons and defense and war is benefitting Americans as much as the piece of the tax pie that helps individuals does. If you can do that... I'll shut up on the subject. I'm not worried about having to shut up very much though.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

Now explain to me how spending the trillions on weapons and defense and war is benefitting Americans as much as the piece of the tax pie that helps individuals does. If you can do that... I'll shut up on the subject. I'm not worried about having to shut up very much though.

Not only the wasteful military and defense spending but the war spending. We are close to $1 trillion for Iraq and all that that unnecessary war has done is:

-invite Al-Qaeda into Iraq when they weren't there before

-cause the death of over 4000 American lives (we mourn the 3000 of 9/11 but MORE have died in Iraq).

-increased our national debt (NO ONE asked how this war was going to be paid for).

-caused us to take our eye off the ball - i.e. Afghanistan- and capturing Bin Laden which we could have done.

-has not made us safer

How did the Iraqi war stop the underwear bomber? Those types of incidents are our real threat and the money would be better spent on intelligence, border security and airport security not war.

[pattygreen 5]

I agree 100%.

I also believe some kind of community service should be mandatory after collecting welfare for so long.

Welfare should be something to help people get back on their feet, not something to live on.

Mandatory community service could save the towns plenty of money, also. Those getting assistance should be required to pick up trash or work at the shelters and Soup kitchens and if they have skills such as masonry or painting, etc., they should be required to do that for the schools and such.