We spend more on our military than most other industrialized countries combined. And then we claim we can't afford to provide healthcare to everyone in the country. Oh, and teachers have to buy pencils for their classrooms.
A solid military is more important than healthcare.
The problem with healthcare, and medicine in general, is that there are no laws in effect to keep pharmaceutical companies and hospitals from charging absurd amounts. You can buy prescription "A" in mexico for a few dollars, but in the USA prescription "A" is hundreds. You know they're making 99.5% profit off most prescriptions. Take the epipen for example. Someone who is a college graduate, and works in a good job can pay $280.00 for a prescription, but someone with no education can get it for $40.00. Our hospital charges $700.00 for an EKG. It's a 1 minute test. A stay in our ICU I heard is 20k a day. If you're a level 1 trauma, and go there, we're probably talking about a 200k visit or more. I won't even get into the amount of people who are illegal residents, that rack up hospital bills, and receive HCAP charity benefits, that sometimes pay 100% of their bills for several months. So then they come in and rack up the largest bill possible. I work in a registration office, which is shared with our financial advocates, and I would say easily 3 or 4 out of every 5 people getting financial help with bills are illegal or here on a green card.
Also, PLENTY of people are getting free healthcare. It's called Molina, Medicaid, and Caresource. Problem is that people getting it are usually just lazy piles of useless waste that leech off society. If those services were only made available to those who actually needed it, like the truly disabled, and MRDD, then it would be a great service. But the vast majority of those people have "depression", and don't work. Or popped out 5 kids in their 20's and don't work.
To some extent, most people have control over their healthcare. They can not sit on the couch all day, exercise, adn eat right, instead of eating fast food every day and smoking. If people actually took care of themselves, healthcare would not be so much an issue.
I personally am all for a strong military right now. Things seems to be getting worse on a daily basis, and have since 911.
but yeah, school should be free. It's one of the things that makes the most sense. If everyone was educated, most problems, wouldn't be a problem. Or at least not to the degree they are.