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The US military's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft is proving to be a pain in the neck in more ways than one. Not only did the Pentagon spend almost $400 billion to buy 2,400 aircraft - about twice as much as it cost to put a man on the moon - the F-35 program is 7 years behind schedule and $163 billion over budget. This at a time when cuts in the defense budget are forcing the Pentagon to shrink the size of the military. CBS 60 Minutes took a closer look at the troubled fighter plane a few months back, but their rebroadcast on Sunday evening seems like as good a reason as any to revisit one of the biggest ongoing budget debacles in U.S. military memory. David Martin gets an inside look at what makes the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter the most expensive weapons system in history.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Monday June 02 2014, @06:23PM
You also essentially explained the problems with our health care system.
30% efficient, when the the top 10 in the world are above 80% IIRC. It's also heavily micromanaged by parasitic middlemen and unduly influenced by Big Pharma and suppliers.
The medical community is forced to give expensive tests, not demanded by medicine, but demanded by insurance companies to justify costs and procedures. A doctor has to literally prove it every single time. Don't even get me started on the preventative component of medicine being completely absent in the US. Insurance companies won't spend a nickle if they don't have to, only to have to spend 100k later on.
People love to get upset about the death panels, but I have personally painful experience with a very sick friend dying because the insurance won't pick up the costs of a procedure that absolutely needs to be done. While this is an anecdote, a neurosurgeon who is a friend of the family reviewed the medical history and tests and thinks it's outright criminal and fundamentally murderous that this insurance company is refusing a life saving procedure saying there not sure it's appropriate.
So in much the same way, corrupt monied interests interfere with medicine and how it operates in the same insane manner as Congress effectively dictating the design of an aircraft and purposefully installing parasites throughout the entire ill advised project to pump up costs well beyond what is actually necessary. My friend lays dying so that a shareholder can purchase more coke and hookers for his weekend getaway on his yacht.
It goes far beyond health care as well. The US is more infested with disease and parasites, literally and metaphorically, than any 3rd world hell hole we sneer at.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.