It was because Joe Biden devoted his entire professional life to service to this country.
Didn't Obama too? Kennedy? And the lot of them? Isn't it like clique-ism? Biden was in RIAA, so he wasn't on tax-payer's payroll in his entire life.
Medals are cheap nowadays. Like a Vietnam veteran once told us: back then, you have to be really something special, like get your guts out and still fighting, or mow down an entire wave of enemy to get MoH. Now, being shot by a friendly earns you one. Not to mention that it is today's generation fault for being too coddled and living a comfortable life. Because, even back in Vietnam war days, he mentioned that an officer got a medal, because he performed a CPR on a soldier suffering from heat stroke during hot day patrol. Such dramatic outcome was because of: lack of preparation despite information on the weather of that day, the officer didn't prepare his patrol members, no extra canteen, no commo checking therefore no quick help, and so on. Stupidity earns him a medal, while this officer, ensuring their patrol members drink twice the amount, and brought one extra canteen each, perform commo check on their radio: they return from patrol uneventful.
Here in germany it was about 11.2% of the GDP in 2014. Constantly climbing. I could imagine that hospitals have no reason to work cost-efficiently when they're not really forced to. But I don't know much facts about the US healthcare system in general. I barely can judge that.
I'm pretty sure Germany's medical care quality are not any less than that of USA, despite their lower spending. EU nations to my knowledge are universal healthcare type with far more comprehensive coverage. But why they spend less? My brother who works in Financial market told me that the medical industry in US is oligopoly type, controlled by a few powerful players. Sure, it is against their free market principle, but when you spend a lot of money prepping up lobbyist, you are free to do that and just shift the lobbying cost to the patients.
The thing is, if you are uninsured in USA, you are screwed. Broken a leg? $40,000. That is worse than a 3rd world country like mine. If you are in a profession exposed to such risk, like building interior or roof installer, and without ACA (Obamacare), the company won't be forced to insure their workers. Thankfully, the Republicans are willing to maintain that clause.
But seriously, them shouting to "defund" the programme is silly when the healthcare industry itself is the money sinkhole. It is about time the Cubans showed this greedy industry how to compete globally, forcing the US to chicken out, like their car manufacturing industry. This is not about hospitals should save cost and let patients suffer. But to rationalise the cost, so everybody got equally better care. I'm not American, but their defense and healthcare spending are significantly higher than most other developed nations. I'm afraid, the world police is trading off its future generation's education and environmental preservation to pay up for that.
