Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

To the Editor:

You acknowledge that for many, $1 trillion is unimaginably more than we can pay for expansion of health care, yet as you point out, it’s less than the $4 trillion unfunded Bush tax cuts.

Let’s look at it another way:

Over 10 years, $1 trillion is $100 billion a year. Given an estimated 308 million people in the United States, that’s $325 a year per person. The $325 breaks down to $27 a month, or roughly $6 a week, or less than 90 cents a day for each of us, man, woman and child, for 10 years, during which we would be providing health insurance to over 30 million people not covered today.

Yes, health care reform is fiendishly complex and expensive. Can we afford a trillion dollars? Yes.

Ben Hardy
Bloomfield, Conn., Dec. 13, 2009

Note from KBJ: The question is not whether we can afford it. Of course we can. We can also afford to give everyone a free cellphone and a year's worth of service. The question is whether it's the right thing to do. By the way, since when is letting people keep their money the same as taking their money and spending it? The letter writer appears not to know where the government gets its money.