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Comment by onlyrealcuzzo | Hacker News Reader

US healthcare costs on the order of $3T per year.

The Iraq war cost about $2T over a decade.

You could have about 10% subsidized healthcare, which I would obviously argue is better than pointless war killing tons of people.

But you couldn't just "have healthcare".

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You're forgetting that U.S. healthcare costs are also massively overblown compared to other western countries, due to the absence of proper collective bargaining. (And possibly even collusion between insurers and healthcare providers to rip off citizens and the government.)

That has nothing to do with the Department of Defense / War, or its budget.

It does with the root comment though, it's all just piss poor politics :-)

The root comment implies that if not for warmongering, you could have had healthcare.

That's not the case. If the USA had a more functioning political system (ranked choice voting etc) and didn't hate 'communism' so much then they would have healthcare.

Yep just like many things Americans are sure can't be done, universal healthcare has never been done anywhere in the world, ever. And healthcare everywhere costs what Americans are willing to pay (public and private money).

See also: not having daily mass shootings.

I don't think OP is talking about a specific war, but the overall cost to maintain such a capability and project force all over the world. At least that is what I perceive when people lament about lack of healthcare.

The United States military budget is now 1.5 trillion dollars per year.

Sure, we could just not have a military and hold hands with Russia and China and everyone else.

We wouldn't need healthcare.

We'd just be dead.

Of course it might cost a lot less if we didn't need to pay for unprovoked attacks on countries like Venezuela and Iran.

What if they didnt try to kill us tho? What if the world is so interconnected now, that we actually could hold hands - especially if we already had those asteroids already at the Lagrange points - if we were "post-scarcity" as a species, what would be worth fighting over?

We absolutely can, and will, go get those asteroids.

The UK spends around £200bn a year on public healthcare that covers everyone, for a population around 1/5th the size. Scale that up and convert to USD and you’re still well under half the $3tn figure you quoted.

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