https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-much-does-...
This website states in 2018, the federal government spent $582B on Medicare, and $389B on Medicaid, plus all the tax exemption for employer sponsored health insurance and ACA subsidies to individual buyers, etc.
https://www.thebalance.com/fy-2018-trump-federal-budget-requ...
Defense and Homeland Security was only ~$630B or so.
The actual facts are in support of the posters point: https://www.abpi.org.uk/facts-and-figures/science-and-innova...
But your example is a real occurrence of abuse under the US system.
The first world has successfully encouraged the drug makers to sell their product cheaper in the third world. If you look on wikipedia drug articles you'll see the price for the generic in the developed and developing world.
https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-03/federal-budget-201...
Main problem was being dismissed for 3 years and doctors not taking to each other.
I can see what people start going to alternative medicine.
One of the treatment options is a specialized diet. So all the crazy diet people are actually circling around valid treatment options.
Health care can be done cheaper. But when a doctor has 5 minutes, there is only so much that can be done.
Exact interest on past military spending is arguable, but those bills still need to be paid.
PS: US healthcare expenditures is similarly a complex topic. Do you include the heath insurance costs of government contractors etc?
https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-federal-budget-breakdown-3305...
> The government expects to spend $4.829 trillion in 2021.1 Almost 60% of that pays for mandated benefits such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
> Social Security will be the biggest expense, budgeted at $1.151 trillion. It's followed by Medicare at $722 billion and Medicaid at $448 billion.
I am not saying any specific number is correct, but that 1T figure excludes military pensions and heath care excludes related research spending. Neither includes any debt payments from past spending or projections of future obligations. In the end it is actually possible to construct a number for each where federal defense spending is greater than federal healthcare spending, but again I don’t agree with such categorizations.
PS: This gets back to the oldest trick in “cutting“ spending, define a portion as something else. Similarly, define a category of taxes as “income taxes“ so you can exclude payroll taxes when talking about them.
> if something were to happen to me or my fellow citizen, at least there wouldn't be millions of dollars in hospital bills to pay back and there would be aid for a home to avoid ending up on the streets
Not trying to be an asshole, but that's not a description of the American system.
Personally, I was just hospitalized with a bout of diabetic ketoacidosis, probably just a day away from going into a coma. I haven’t even had to see a bill. It was 100% paid by the state and federal programs.
If I hadn’t set up insurance before going to the doctor, though, I’d have received ridiculously high bills, probably been provided less service, and it would be up to me to get it paid back. I had a situation before where I went to the ER while an insurance application was pending, and then after it was approved and I provided my info, the private hospital dilly dallied and sent it to collections anyway.
No, its not. US public healthcare spending (which in most states is the lion’s share of public welfare spending, and is also on the US is more than defense spending and is, in fact, pretty typical as a share of GDP, high as a share of taxes (because of the light US tax burden), and enormous per capita compared to other industrialized nations. Its small as a share of total national healthcare spending compared to other countries, because we have to even more private spending on top of it, and the whole healthcare system (or, rather, the literally hundreds of mutually-interfering public and private healthcare systems) is the single most inefficient healthcare delivery system in the world, but we spend plenty of money on it, just not well.