Use war money for health-care costs

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The Register's Sept. 20 editorial, "How Will the Nation Pay for Health Reform?" questioned how much health-care reform is going to cost and how we intend to pay for it.

We could start by taking a realistic view of the war on terror that the Obama administration inherited from Dick Cheney and George W. Bush.

According to the Center for Defense Information, the estimated cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will reach $864 billion by the end of fiscal year 2009.

Converting our ill-advised military quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan into a common-sense strategy would go a long way toward saving a large chunk of that money, which could be diverted to guaranteeing that all Americans get the affordable, quality health care a modern industrial society owes its citizens.

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