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Comment by s5300 | Hacker News Reader

>> This is confusing to say the least, the US are providing Israel with heavy hardware and ammunition to kill the Palestinian civilians, and then they want to take the children victims for medical care?! Why the US plays on both sides?

The US taxpayer has always paid for Israel’s citizens healthcare, while US citizens go without healthcare and ration their necessary medicine. Makes you wonder how such leverage can exist.

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> The US taxpayer has always paid for Israel’s citizens healthcare

What is your source for this claim?

Most US military aid to Israel goes to US defense contractors. The US hasn't provided any significant economic aid to Israel in decades.

Because the $1 saved on a missile can be spent elsewhere?

Dollars are fungible

By this logic, the US is funding X at 173 countries, where X is anything governments spend money on (healthcare, soup kitchens, cocktail parties?)

Since the US has shuttered USAID which distrubutes food for humanitarian reasons, and made massive cuts to domestic healthcare program, this is indeed the logic of the current administration

Your rhetorical question is more true than you may realize: The high levels of US military spending is indeed a major reason why so many countries in (for example) Europe have been able to afford their robust social welfare systems instead of having to spend more of their budget on defense than they traditionally have.

A lot of articles discussing the consequences of the Trump administration’s pressure on other NATO countries to spend more of their GDP on defense and its public hesitation to protect Europe militarily have discussed how some of European governments’ nonmilitary expenses may have to be reduced as a result.

No, robust healthcare is cheaper than the US system.

Here in Sweden we had this even back in the day when we spent 5% of GDP on defence, mostly materiel, and upon that had mandatory military service.

The US healthcare system is more expensive than a Swedish-style healthcare system. Another fun fact: our university education is cheaper per head than our high school education.

I think the education of physicians is maybe 1.5x as expensive as high school education, but that's an unusually expensive program.

If you focus only on healthcare, I agree completely. But then look at the rest of the system. I don't know about Sweden specifically, so I'll stick with Germany as the example I know better: free university education for everyone, strong unemployment benefits and worker rights, heavily subsidized mass transportation, lots of social housing even if still inadequate for the demand, the list goes on and on... Definitely not a cheap bill, and definitely more affordable when not having to spend that money on the military.

They aren't really dollars, so much as in-kind aid. The US pays Raytheon to manufacture interceptors in the US and then send them to Israel. So it's fungible in the sense that without US military aid, Israel would have to figure out how to pay for missile defense and other military needs. And maybe that involves less domestic spending on healthcare and maybe it involves making deals with other countries or making foreign or military policy changes. Maybe it leads to positive changes like peace deals, but maybe it leads to negative changes, like Israel switching its allegiance to countries that aren't as friendly to US interests.

Ultimately, the person I'm replying to is giving a false impression of what the US is doing.

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