Snake Doctor

It can't be just discretionary spending. If it was then defense would be the biggest slice of the pie, and the interest on the debt wouldn't be in there. That's not "discretionary"

Something that's important to note though is that the 41% on "social services" and 19% on health care are medicare and social security combined. Those are paid for with dedicated taxes (SS actually runs a surplus currently) so that's now how your income tax dollars are apportioned.

Those items aren't "welfare" they are things that people have paid for their whole lives through dedicated payroll taxes.

Peaches is right.
Poor people have insurance, it's called medicaid.

The problem is the people in the middle, who don't work for an employer who offers health insurance, or who have a pre-existing condition and are denied coverage for that reason, etc.

Right now what happens is those people use hospital emergency rooms as their primary care vehicle.
They don't pay the bill and we're stuck with it through state and local taxes that go to hospitals.

So we're already paying for the healthcare of people who don't have insurance, we're just paying through the backdoor.
At least if we had a universal system everyone would have to contribute in some form or fashion. This way the people in the middle don't get a free ride and it's much cheaper for us to have these people visit a doctor's office regularly to get their blood pressure checked than it is to have them show up in the ER with a stroke.

The benefits of a federal system are ENORMOUS, this is why every industrialized nation in the world except the U.S. has one.
The arguments against are really nothing more than PROPAGANDA, drilled into you by right wing radio nuts and idiots like Ann Coulter.

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