Originally posted by: DLeRium
Originally posted by: senseamp
Originally posted by: OCguy
Originally posted by: senseamp
Ever hear that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure? You cut AIDS prevention, you are going to have to spend many fold down the road on AIDS treatment. A lot more than you would on interest to borrow $50M to pay for AIDS prevention. Also, what do you think is going to happen to those kids whose health coverage is going to be cut? Instead of getting preventative care at a doctor, they are going to go to ERs more sick, go to school sick and get other kids sick, and it will end up costing a lot more overall with everyone being worse off as a result.
Maybe, maybe not. We don't have the money, so things need to be sacrificed.
If we don't have money to pay interest on loans to fund AIDS prevention, we sure as hell don't have money to pay for AIDS treatment that costs orders of magnitude more.
Of course we don't know for sure how many more people will get infected as a result, it's not like we had another former actor Republican California governor who thought not funding AIDS prevention and ignoring the problem instead was a great idea, so no lessons to learn from history at all. :roll:
Look, there's a lot of problems with this world. If any one of us were in charge, regardless of views, I think bringing in money magically would solve a lot of problems. Maybe I wouldn't solve the UHC problem like you would, but certainly if I dumped more money on health care, things would get better.
Bottom line is we DON'T have money in this state. Something has got to give. You can complain complain complain that we're not spending here there and everywhere, but the fact is we don't have money. My car is falling apart and my shock absorbers need to get replaced, but I don't have money at the moment, so I have to make do with what I have to get to work. Next time I bring my car in within a month or so I'll see how much it costs and maybe I can scrounge up some cash. But if our state doesn't have any money, just like some of us are starved for cash, there's nothing you can do.
You can make one item that we skip out on funding for seem like the worst thing in the world when you're fighting for it. Clearly, you're fighting for AIDS prevention very dearly. I could make the argument that money spent for that would better go to education to make crappy schools in Oakland stop churning out America's next gangsters and how the stagnant and non-motivated people of the poor East Bay could benefit from a better generation that will bring some prosperity back to the region, etc etc. But look, without money, we can't do it, so TOUGH. Be glad CA has a budget at least.