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Comment by questime | Hacker News Reader

Because of demographics this is a problem we will have to confront regardless - do you think medicare/medicaid spending will become 80% of government spending?

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Maybe with higher taxes and a reallocation of defense spending we’d be able to sustain a more humane society for longer.

Is it indefinitely sustainable? Not sure. I don’t know if it’s as easy as just extrapolating from recent trends because there may be countless unknowns from biomedical advances to climate destabilized societies to being turned into biological batteries for our machine overlords in the next few centuries.

Having medicare operate under a fee for service model will never be sustainable in the long run. We already spend $ 755 B on Medicare, which is roughly equivalent to the DoD's $ 767 B, and Medicare is notoriously wasteful[1][2].

[1] https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hpb20220506.432025/

[2] https://vbidcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/jama_shran...

https://www.usaspending.gov/agency/department-of-defense#:~:....

>In FY 2022, the Department of Defense (DOD) had $1.64 Trillion distributed among its 6 sub-components.

Where are you getting this 767B number?

The treasury department’s website[1]. I wonder if your link is rolling in the VA? I can’t quite tell.

[1] https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

>Department of Defense--Military Programs

I wonder if that means they're subtracting portions of the DoD budget that aren't technically military operations.

As with many of these categories it can be hard to pin down accurate numbers.

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