Just fixing some obvious cases of stupidity would save us untold billions.
I just finished 17ys at Sandia National Labs, sister lab to Los Alamos. A friend of mine, an exceptionally brilliant physics PhD, widely published, several patents but humble individual shared a story with me.
His father was in ill health, in constant pain. The medicare process put him into a hospital for constant testing and painful surgeries. The outcome? His father died in pain and Medicare was billed for $707,000 for one month, no typo $707K. The gross cost didn't accompish anything but waste taxpayer's dollars.
Social Security used to have a benefit where the teenage child of a person receiving Social Security got a monthly check when attending college. Why??? Why should his kid get money because he had kids late in life? Waste, pure and simple, fluff dealt out by Congress to appease some group.
On the gun control front, we have pediatricians acting as though homes with firearms mean the parents are negligent. NONE of their business and they should be told to shut up.
And yes, we have CA and others giving illegals free medical care while cutting benefits to it's citizens and our fearless leader wants to force his Obamacare down our throats on one hand and fully subsidize the non performers with free care while shoveling the burden on those who are more successful. What a crock.
After reading more of the posts such as Raspy, I will add that I am also retired military and despite promises from Congress, we haven't had free medical care, not by a long shot. At times, CHAMPUS, as it was called in the past, only paid about 50% of "usual and customary" costs, pathetic coverage. It's gotten a good bit better recently but take the case of a young Marine's wife who goes home to relatives while her husband is getting his rear shot off in Afghanistan. She has to go on civilian medical facilities, copays deductables etc while illegals and others get free care. That's our bureaucracy at work for us. Don
