• BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed in 2021 allocates $550 billion over the next five years. That’s in addition to another $650 billion that was already allocated.

          I know you and I have a habit of disagreeing on essentially all things, so feel free to not respond to this, but I did want to put an actual fact out for anyone else reading and thinking that we literally don’t spend money on infrastructure while we throw tons of money at war, because that’s simply not true, even if you think the proportions are off.

          • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            The infrastructure and jobs act was far less than what we need, because half the government wants to starve the poor and kill them with preventable diseases and enslave them in lifelong debt. Remember that.

              • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                Eat my ass. It’s a fact that the bill was whittled down by compromises because half the government thinks any form of government spending is too expensive. Yet that same half loves spending money on war. Where’s the lie?

    • ijeff@lemdro.id
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      1 year ago

      They already spend a ton of public dollars on health. The problem is that it goes to insurance companies, administrative staff, and the downstream health costs of inadequate early access to care.

      • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        You’re kinda contradicting yourself.

        They don’t spend public dollars on health. They give it to insurance companies and administrative staff and pharmaceutical companies and other private moneyed interests, and then there’s none left for us.

        • ijeff@lemdro.id
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          1 year ago

          They actually do spend a lot of public dollars on health, it’s just spent into a system that isn’t efficient. Universal access to care drives down costs significantly across the board - instead they have piecemeal coverage and a system with overall costs inflated by administrative staff hired solely to manage insurance billing and delayed treatments.

          It’s an interesting area of policy where expanding coverage means lower costs overall.

          • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            A lot of the money they spend on “health” isn’t actually spent on the labor or materials or research needed to provide healthcare, it’s stolen as profit by private companies.

            It’s important to remember that this money isn’t being spent on our healthcare. It’s being handed to moneyed interests.

            • ijeff@lemdro.id
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              1 year ago

              This is true for any health system (labour and technology costs are huge components to health care, even in systems with universal coverage). However, there are also huge and significant costs inherent to any system that doesn’t provide universal coverage (e.g., people delaying care leading to more severe illness costlier to respond to). Private insurance systems also introduce significant cost pressures even for non-profit and publicly funded providers by driving up staffing costs and requiring more support staff to operate.

              All this to say, the US doesn’t have a budget problem when it comes to health care - the primary obstacle is the policy challenge of switching to a system that does a better job at delivering care for everyone based on need rather than ability/willingness to pay. Massive cost savings follow when people are kept healthier.

              • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                My point is the money isn’t actually being spent on labor or technology - it’s just going into shareholders pockets.