One Little Idea to Help out Healthcare

The president has come up with his budget request, which entails cuts to the Medicare program and increases in domestic security. While I understand that this feeds into our national obsession with being safe from the terrorist threat, the inefficiency with which we go about trying to accomplish this approaches that of delivering health care in this country, which seems to be a lingering problem we can never shake. Couldn't we:

1. Impose a $1 a gallon tax on gasoline so that we can starve out those authoritarian regimes we are up against by decreasing consumption of the one commodity that props them up? 
2. Spend some dollars training foreign speakers so that we can actually decipher some of those communications that we are so keen on intercepting? 
3. Understand that we are not the only ones suffering at the hands of religious zealots and extremists (e.g. the Danes)? 

I wonder if providers could get in on the homeland security action. We could pitch the notion that preventive care improves security by keeping people out of hospitals, so that they could spend more time being vigilant, mindful, etc. I mean, look at Jack Bauer, the counter terrorism agent on “24”. He is one healthy dude, right? He has got to be getting some stellar health care.

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