Mark and I bought our house about seven years ago.  It's a very old house, and not a lot of repairs have been made since it was built, so it has had a fair share of issues.  One of those issues was the main sewage line in our front yard.  Tree roots had intertwined around the pipe, and were growing and blocking the passage of water.  Every couple of months, this sewer line would get so backed up that our toilets and showers would start draining slowly.  The whole house would stink.   We had a plumber come out and diagnose the problem.  He could snake the drain out to the main line for about $250.  Or we could repair the main line completely, for $5000.

Repairing the main line seemed like an impossible expense.  So for several years, instead of dealing with the issue, we lived in crisis management mode.  We ignored the problem until things got really bad, and then every 3-6 months we would get desperate enough to call a plumber to snake the drain again. 

After about three years of this, we realized that paying to fix the problem was the right thing to do.   It seemed like an insane amount of money at the time.  We didn't have the money.  We didn't want to spend the money.  But we knew we needed to fix the root of the problem, because not fixing it would be more expensive in the long run.

Because sometimes, you have to spend money in the short-term to save money in the long-term.   Especially  when there are problems that are making you sick.

(The bipartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that healthcare reform will cut the nation's deficit by more than a trillion dollars over 20 years .  A great article explaining how it can achieve that reduction of national debt is here.)