You can relive an animated version of the Apollo 11 mission on www.wechoosethemoon.org. Very interesting, just started streaming in the last half hour. Celebrating the 40th year anniversary of the mission. If you are wanting to just relive the landing, it will occur on 20 July.
The Space Shuttle Endeavor successfully launched yesterday on its mission to the International Space Station and there are plans for the crews on both spacecraft to commemorate the landing.
I appreciated Secretary Sebelius as she appeared on the Daily Show taking time to explain, though just the surface, of the nitty gritty of what President Obama’s health-care package really means. My own justification for supporting nationalized health-care is that while not just providing aid and additional health-care options to those getting the short end of the stick, like the middle and lower classes, it preserves the right to life. If someone is suffering from a curable condition but can’t receive treatment due to lack of coverage, number one their life is being needlessly jeopardized and number two they aren’t being productive members of society if they are forced to stay home due to their condition.
As Sebelius put it tonight and as it has been put so many times by President Obama, it isn’t that the government will be creating a program that will be dominating the market, they will be offering another option to those who currently do not have coverage or for those who want another option. If you have a good doctor and good coverage, KEEP IT. If you’re in line at the free clinic and receiving the bare minimum or not at all, or if you’re in the middle class and your coverage needlessly penalizes you, there is now another option available.
To conservatives who argue our system is the best in the world, why then are Americans dying sooner than their counterparts in nearly every other industrialized nation, nations that have so-called “socialized” health-care. It’s time for America to catch up, we’ve been sitting on our hands and have been largely ignoring this issue for far too long and its time for the system to be altered.
Don’t be scared off by the $1 trillion price tag - it’s being paid over the next decade and that $1,000,000,000,000 is going to save lives. In contrast, the war in Iraq alone has cost the U.S. nearly $687,470,000,000 ($687 billion), the price of a war which raises more questions of morality than a national health-care system.
I trust Obama’s plan to pay for it using existing funds and taxes and it may in fact be necessary to raise taxes in some instances to pay for it. He’s already made more advancements to cutting programs than his predecessor, and I suspect that as his presidency moves forward, it is likely more programs will be cut. Government might not have a net loss in size but it certainly won’t experience the tremendous growth it experienced from 2001-2008. That’s a topic for another post in and of itself.
My final word: It’s not just about improving our health-care system, and it’s not about punishing the wealthy by raising their taxes, it’s about taking a step in the right direction to getting our priorities straight as a nation.