Comments (25) Jump to Comments Form

1. 

   Johanan Rakkav said, 2 months ago

   Oy…

2. 

   EarlWash said, 2 months ago

   That one ‘flu’ over the coocoo’s nest.

3. 

   pouncingtiger said, 2 months ago

   I didn’t expectorate that.

4. 

   Yukoner said, 2 months ago

   Stop one of the wars. There would be sufficient funds and some left over.

5. 

   baslim_the_begger said, 2 months ago

   That’s another form of cold cash.

6. 

   sjoujke said, 2 months ago

   Looks like taxation is reaching a fever pitch.

7. 

   Ronshua said, 2 months ago

   Fleecing us sheep , we’ll all have influenza .

8. 

   fredbuhl said, 2 months ago

   He’s such a phlegm-boyant spender, it snot even funny.

9. 

   Allan Claus said, 2 months ago

   It’s the cold reality of life … everything is feverishly taxed now a days. As Mr. T would say I PITY THE FLU!

10. 

    FishStix said, 2 months ago

    That makes as much sense as anything else I’ve heard in this so-called “health care” debate!

11. 

    Wildcard24365 said, 2 months ago

    Hey! There’s no RHEUM for this kind of sick humor!

    Gyawd… I just can’t HACK it…

12. 

    SQUIDBREAKER said, 2 months ago

    I believe our flue will be taxed under cap n trade.

    Our flue has emissions.

    The bee vitamins keep the flu away.

    A.

13. 

    whmIII said, 2 months ago

    …and I hope you choke!

14. 

    Kyle said, 2 months ago

    EarlWash said: “That one ‘flu’ over the coocoo’s nest.”

    Nah, that would be ‘bird flu,’ the hysteria over which has pretty much died out. No money in that.

    Swine flu (as in, “When pigs flu!”) is another story altogether!

15. 

    OldHipster said, 2 months ago

    Well, that certainly makes my hidden private parts tingle!

16. 

    Susan001 said, 2 months ago

    OK, Americans! Line up here for your flu shots!

17. 

    AKHenderson said, 2 months ago

    We don’t have enough wars to stop to get the required funds. Medicare alone cost $386 billion last year, and that’s a drop in the bucket compared to nationalizing the rest of health care coverage.

18. 

    CogentModality said, 2 months ago

    Man, that was a cold shot.

19. 

    dkram said, 2 months ago

    0.o
    All puns intended right?

20. 

    Ushindi said, 2 months ago

    AKH: (When the Iraq war was estimated to cost $1.2 trillion overall - the estimates are higher now, of course)

    ” For starters, $1.2 trillion would pay for an unprecedented public health campaign — a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment for every American whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a global immunization campaign to save millions of children’s lives.

    Combined, the cost of running those programs for a decade wouldn’t use up even half our money pot. So we could then turn to poverty and education, starting with universal preschool for every 3- and 4-year-old child across the country. The city of New Orleans could also receive a huge increase in reconstruction funds.

    The final big chunk of the money could go to national security. The recommendations of the 9/11 Commission that have not been put in place — better baggage and cargo screening, stronger measures against nuclear proliferation — could be enacted. Financing for the war in Afghanistan could be increased to beat back the Taliban’s recent gains, and a peacekeeping force could put a stop to the genocide in Darfur.”

    Obviously, that didn’t happen - we’re still paying for the war, and will be for a long time to come - this is all borrowed money, remember.

21. 

    fredbuhl said, 2 months ago

    Please save that “discussion” for the political cartoons page. If I’m in the mood for pseudo- intellectual drivel I’ll look there.

22. 

    Ushindi said, 2 months ago

    fredbuhl: I think you vastly overrate the importance of your opinion to others, and speaking of “drivel”……

    Edit: Don’t misunderstand - I have no problem with your right to disagree with my ideas or opinions. What I DO disagree with is you deciding WHAT I should post, which comments I make are acceptable. I will post what I want, as does everyone else, regardless of whether or not you wish to read it. That’s my say on the subject.

23. 

    whitehound said, 2 months ago

    Thing is, as individuals you’ll probably be better off with state health care. To start with, if you had cheaper healthcare and prescriptions in the US, then the pharmacies would stop charging you up to five times what people in other countries pay for the same medicines, because they would know that - as happens here in the UK - if they charged too much you would just go to your GP and ask for a prescription. So you would save money there to start with.

    You won’t actually end up paying much more, unless you are earning good money but living without any health insurance. What the NHS is is basically an insurance firm owned by the government, and you don’t need any other. The only thing private healthcare does better here is long-term rehab. for drug addiction etc, and really non-urgent things like tattoo removal. For anything life-threatening, the NHS does it better anyway - and although you have to pay more taxes you save by not needing to pay for private insurance. Or if your company was paying for your health insurance, then it won’t have to anymore, so it will be able to pay you a higher salary.

    Those of you who think you can manage with no health insurance policy, so that having to pay for one would be an imposition, consider that unless you meet with an accident and die young, one day you will be old and frail and not a wage-earner - and then it’s going to be too late to buy private insurance, so you’ll either die or become a charity case and a burden on the state.

    Two years ago a mate of mine (the real-life model on whom Snape in the Harry Potter books was based), who was 68 at the time, had £100,000-worth of state-of-the-art, specialised cancer surgery which could not have been done better anywhere in the world and he says that he couldn’t imagine better care. As a retired teacher nearing seventy, if he’d been in the US I would expect that either he wouldn’t have been able to afford the insurance that would cover that sort of surgery, or if he could then it would have cost him much more than his National Insurance contributions ever did.

24. 

    rricchhterr said, 2 months ago

    my guess is our government believes that if we can’t pay them, we’ll kick their bleepin’ bleeep

25. 

    AKHenderson said, 2 months ago

    Ushindi can’t do accounting. Regarding costs, you compare fixed to fixed and variable to variable, not fixed to variable.

    Iraq isn’t a fixed cost. It costs $200 billion annually (1.2 trillion / six years). The current Medicare budget exceeds that figure by 93%. You think a single-payer or other form of socialized medicine can be done that cheaply in a nation as large as the US???

    We’ve got entitlement programs stretched way beyond the nation’s ability to pay for them already, even without wars.