National Defense

[HydrogenBond]

The Constitution mandates that the government should provide for the common defense. Although our government does a good job against external enemies, it is not forfilling the Constitutional mandate because it is not protecting its citizens from internal enemies. The internal enemies are disease and cancer. These internal enemies inflict more civilian casualties than all the external enemies combined, yet very little military effort is focused on that vulnerable area of national defense. The Foundering Father never made provisions concerning intercontinental missle attack yet our government has extrapolated the Consitution to include this threat. Should the extraoplation also include internal enemies?

[Tormod]

I would be very scared the day the military gets in charge of cancer research.

[UncleAl]

Government is never the solution and is often the problem. Example: Homeland Severity.

[C1ay]

Should the extraoplation also include internal enemies?

No

[Buffy]

You've heard it here: Extreme liberals to extreme conservatives agree: The DOD has no business dealing with internal "enemies"....

 

Commonly caused,

Buffy

[HydrogenBond]

There is a difference between the government acting to appease imaginary induced social anxiety for the needs of politics and big business, and acting to resolve real conflict. Homeland security created jobs more than anything else. If the government was really doing its job, they would have provided homeland security discretely in the background, like in a casino, and still get job done, at a fraction of the cost. One does not catch prey by making a lot of noise. That helps the prey escape and lengthens the time scale of the hunt.They should not be stealing freedom from its citizen to address imaginary perpetual enemies, but that was the price of jobs, i.e., creating busybody work.

 

We have become a feminine culture where the government and marketeers can sell anything using fear or feminine insecurity. Even the men have become women in the spirital sense, where a good social makeup job now mean more than character and long term desire for truth. We have become a society of short term and immediate solutions to appease induced fear and anxiey leading to long term problems. But health care is not based on short term induced imaginary fear to manipulate the population. It is real and requires long term masculine thinking. The irony is that govenment supports capitalist medicine, shouldn't that tell us something.

 

A lot of private sector research money is going into wrinkle cream, sex drugs, mood adjustment, weight management, chloresterol, etc., all of which are geared to capitalize on short term induced social anxiety. Much of the research on cancer is due to government funding rather than the good will of the private sector. When there is a real war and real threat, the men begin to feel fear, not for themselves, but for those under their care, and would be willing to sacrifice themselves for the common good. Men currently feel short term fear due to feminine anxiety, i.e., stock prices, and no longer feel real fear needing clear long term thinking, short term sacrifice, that lead to long term solutions.

 

The long term fear that I have about government control of medicine is beaurocracy. Beaurocracy is the art of creating jobs for more people than is required to get the job done. Too many people means too many paper pushers, who eventually get bored and lose interest. So when the time to act is near they have lost their edge. During real emergency conditions, the chain of command becomes useful. I would set a time limit for results that keeps the system in a state of emergency so the work force stays at its best.

 

As far as the miltiary taking over health care, they are able to mobilize quickly, much faster than the privite sector. I would preferred the milatry fighting a war that saves lives, to their being overseas taking and losing lives. If one looks at even the military during peace time they are always practicing, keeping their edge, and willing to sacrifice themsevles for all of us, which is the attituted needed to get the job done. The military also uses private sector contractor bidding (creative perception) who are then under time limits and production quotas, further adding to needed ingenuity. This mobilizes the private sector and creates a buffer so they can look at a long term view of their businesses. It also creates spinoffs for the short term captialists.

[CraigD]

… We have become a feminine culture where the government and marketeers can sell anything using fear or feminine insecurity.

Words of caution: associating the traits of fearfulness and insecurity with the female gender is both historically inaccurate, and likely to make one highly unpopular with the ladies.

As far as the miltiary taking over health care, they are able to mobilize quickly, much faster than the privite sector.

The next time you or someone in you presence is in medical distress (may this misfortune never befall you), try calling both 911 and the Pentagon, and see who mobilizes the faster.

 

In modern industrial nations, it’s unusual to hear concerns about the swiftness of emergency medical response. The prevalent healthcare concern is containing cost, an area in which the military has a notoriously poor track record.

 

I’m “second generation” US military medical, in the sense that my father was a Vietnam-era Army MD, and I have worked as a computer programmer for the Veterans Administration (it’s unusual to find a MUMPS programmer who hasn’t). I can say with some confidence that the military has neither the desire, the resources, or the culture to “take over healthcare.” With the exception of a few specialized branches of medicine such as “battlefield medicine”, burn treatment, and chemical weapon injury treatment, military clinicians are not particularly numerous or well trained. For the most part, modern military medical doctrine is to stabilize battlefield injuries and transport the injured into the care of civilian clinicians as quickly as possible. Since the buildup of large permanent US military following WWII, the non-battlefield care of military personnel has always been trusted to the civilian sector.

 

Keep in mind that there are actually only a couple of thousands MDs holding commissions in any branch of the US military (with an about equal number in the Reserves, and a much smaller number in the National Guards)

 

We should not downplay the historic or future value of the military to medicine. Many medical advances are the result of techniques developed by military clinicians during wartime and between. Military docs’ expertise in the treatment of such injuries as those caused by chemical weapons could prove vital in the event of a terrorist attack using such weapons (may this never occur). They do not, however, hold any secret to curing society’s healthcare failings.

 

Of more concern to me than what I perceive as a misunderstanding on your part of the capabilities and role of the various US military medical service corps is your suggestion that the military should “take over” anything. As set forth by the Constitution The US military is a very specific instrument of Legislature and Executive, the former’s to call into being, the latter’s to command. It is not a branch of government unto itself, and could, in complete accordance with the Constitution, be dissolved entirely at any time by Congress. (with the exception of the Navy, which Congress is charged with maintaining as necessary to assure the safety of shipping)

 

A powerful, autonomous military is of great potential peril to a free state, something the framers of our government well knew. The possibility of such an organization coming to be is something to be wary of, not encourage, especially in the wake of the large military deployments around the recent hurricanes in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.