American taxpayers footed the bill for at least $1.8 trillion in federal and state health care expenditures in 2022 — about 41% of the nearly $4.5 trillion in both public and private health care spending the U.S. recorded last year, according to the annual report released last week by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
On top of that $1.8 trillion, third-party programs, which are often government-funded, and public health programs accounted for another $600 billion in spending.
This means the U.S. government spent more on health care last year than the governments of Germany, the U.K., Italy, Spain, Austria, and France combined spent to provide universal health care coverage to the whole of their population (335 million in total), which is comparable in size to the U.S. population of 331 million.
Between direct public spending and compulsory, tax-driven insurance programs, Germany spent about $380 billion in health care in 2022; France spent around $300 billion, and so did the U.K.; Italy, $147 billion; Spain, $105 billion; and Austria, $43 billion. The total, $1.2 trillion, is about two-thirds of what the U.S. government spent without offering all of its citizens the option of forgoing private insurance.
Dismantle? No.
Reform for efficiency? Yes.
For example, the entire admin back end can be civil service. (Some of it already is) and contracting needs to go die in a dumpster fire. You’ve got at least 30,000 infantrymen sitting around doing nothing on any given day. Take a survey of their skills and start assigning additional duties. You can always fall back on contractors if you run out of grunts.
Also, for the love of God stop maintaining an entire mechanized army. You don’t need to mount every soldier at the same time. Yes it’s awesome. But most infantry units aren’t going much of anywhere once they’re dug in.
Efficiency of what? Imperialism? Fuck no.
Until superheroes or the Carebears become real we will need a military. The things I mentioned don’t touch the power projection debate on purpose. That’s a whole ideology thing that people need to be voting for and stuff. I’m taking about ways to save money whether we pull back or not.
Ready troops? Care Bear Stare!
It would be awesome.
you gotta source for that platitude?
Source: Ukraine. Gave up nuclear weapons in exchange for an accord specifying its borders and promising peace. Almost immediately got invaded by a nuclear power with an army after making political decisions on its own. If it had kept its nuclear weapons, Russia would not have been so cavalier about straight up invading. Disarmament is a lie.
Disarmament of an actual nuclear power has been done once. South Africa.
Ukraine never owned or controlled those nukes. They were guarded by Russian soldiers. They would have had to attack Russian soldiers, somehow repulse a Russian counterattack without Western aid, and then reprogram them since they didn’t have launch codes. Ukraine got the best concessions they could for giving Russia back the Russian nukes.
Yeah. The world. Minutemen were cool in 1776. But that wouldn’t fly these days.
You think Russia/Iran/China would just behave without the threat of US intervention?
Ironically, without the “bigger threat” of the USA, they’d likely be at odds against each other. China still wants Outer Manchuria back, a region it was forced to cede to Russia back in 1860. Iran wants to be the de facto power of the muslim world, but has to deal with many other muslim countries that don’t want it, plus Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan are countries that Russia would prefer to have control over.
Yeah there might be a struggle there for a bit but China would steamroll both of them and then what?
I doubt China would steamroll them. People thought Russia would steamroll Ukraine, it very clearly didn’t. Besides, China isn’t exactly a loved country, it has “allies” that would likely abandon them on the first opportunity and many countries that would love to see them getting kicked in the proverbial nuts.
Any militaristic action of China against any of those big targets would trigger a response from several countries. While everyone will talk peace, in reality a good portion would try to play the war up for as long as possible, to bleed both dry.