If you consider the cost of healthcare in developed countries, it may be that meat is much more expensive.
Human beings have thrived eating meat for hundreds of thousands of years. And it's a lot harder to completely address all the nutritional requirements on a purely vegetarian diet, but not impossible.
Here are videos exploring studies about meat, which convinced me.
How is meat produced, if not agriculture?
In any case, agriculture barely employs anyone nowadays, with mechanization and animal factory-farms.
I pay several times more for my phone+internet per year than for my healthcare (and I have 2 separate chronic conditions)
What you don't pay for out of pocket, you do pay either in quality of care or through your taxes, one way or the other.