Idk why any politicians arent picking up on foreign price controls as a means of lowering costs in the US. It should be a part of the discussion during any trade talks with Europe.
You really think that nobody outside the US are making drugs? Like no drugs are ever developed in Europe??
Cost can be shared among the US and Europe populations. So per user cost would come down by a lot.
So in essence we’d have to design drugs and not publish the chemistry which would be uncovered soon enough anyways. This leads to a situation where investment dollars go into other things and human health suffers, especially with so-called rare diseases.
Not to mention the USA loses hegemony. The USA provides Europe with a great deal of military technology and protection as well as medicine but it isn’t for free. The EU exchanges agency in many ways important strategically to American interests. It’s mainly a fair deal.
Here's a novel idea: cut military spending in half, and you can provide all the free medicine to all Americans for the rest of their lives. All the while making the world a safer place.
Half the US defense budget is no where near the amount spent on healthcare in the private sector.
Healthcare:
The federal government spent nearly $1.2 trillion in fiscal year 2019. In addition, income tax expenditures for health care totaled $234 billion.
https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-much-does-...
Defense:
Defense spending amounted to $714 billion in FY 2020—and is expected to increase to $733 billion in FY 2021.
[1] https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Sta...
A soldier whose leg was blown up in Afghanistan and is still in a hospital - is not part of that $714-733 billion. So the US military budget is only that low if your definition of "defense" spending does not cover that.
The reality is the US spends over one trillion a year in military spending.
Your own link says as much. It puts "Veteran's medical care" under the health care entitlement side of the equation, as opposed to the military spending side of the equation.
Where are you getting that? From here https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/IF11442.pdf and the link in the comment you responded to it seems that it is only about 80 billion.
Even if you add that to the 700 billion figure for the military, and add 200 billion for the entire VA, Medicare and Medicade alone account for well over a trillion dollars, and that’s not even the majority of healthcare expenses in the US.
damn, right again. That sure is a mind blowing situation the U.S is in.
https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Sta...
Medicare spending grew 6.7% to $799.4 billion in 2019, or 21 percent of total NHE.
Medicaid spending grew 2.9% to $613.5 billion in 2019, or 16 percent of total NHE.
first off I thought it was clear from my comment that I had not believed the original comment that healthcare was greater than defense spending, but some initial investigation seems to confirm it.
The reason that I had not believed it was that I thought there was an ideological axe to grind behind the statement, so I was surprised.
It seems to me that you maybe are thinking the same thing about me, that is to say I have an ideological axe to grind proving that U.S defense spending is not that high. If so a quick examination of my posting history and the posts here should dissuade you of this.
As far as your argument - I agree the medical costs of the soldier still in the hospital should probably be counted in defense costs somehow but not sure how you would do it as I do not believe a veteran out in the job market working 9-5 and going to the VA for some medical costs should be counted as defense spending. Thus I don't think it is possible to just move all the costs of the VA over and get any fairer an accounting than one has now.
At least 34% of that is spent on admin alone: https://time.com/5759972/health-care-administrative-costs/ and most of that is on privately insurers overhead.
> Half the US defense budget is no where near the amount spent on healthcare in the private sector
It would be way more than enough if there was some political will behind it.
It’s true that the plurality of healthcare costs are private insurance, but medicare and medicade combine to a little less than twice the entire defense budget.
The US government could cut significantly into the out of pocket expenses if they halved the defense budget. This link is interesting: https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Sta...