HEALTH CARE: How to fund rising costs

I read with interest Tonya Coppedge’s recent letter to the Forum regarding rising health care costs. To my chagrin, Ms. Coppedge’s solution to fund rising health care costs is to deny our government's request for monetary increases for our military to finish up the war in Iran. My question is why would we pull out of a war we are winning with a country who is the biggest sponsor of terror in the world and has pledged death to America for 47 years? A war with a country that every past president, Democrat or Republican, has vowed should never have a nuclear weapon. Would you rather wait until Iran has a missile that will reach our borders or they use a missile on an American military base in a foreign country?

Because there is no greater threat to America’s safety than underfunding our military and police, I would instead choose to: (1) eliminate fraud in our government disbursement pay outs and (2) eliminate illegal immigrants and the associated costs to American taxpayers.

A few examples of this fraud and illegal immigrant expenditures are: Minnesota’s social program fraud by the Somalis and the Minnesota government officials is reportedly $20 billion; California’s Medicaid program is reportedly losing $146 billion per year to fraud in addition to $267 million in fraud scheme involving hospice centers; Arizona $3.2 billion year on illegal immigration; New York estimated $12 billion per year on illegal immigrants.

In conclusion, if we audited all 50 states for fraud and illegal immigrant payouts, we could likely all have free health care and a strong, well-funded military and police force.

PATRICIA TURNER

Coeur d’Alene