There’s Always Money for War
Washington found billions for bombs over Iran in days. But when Americans ask for healthcare, suddenly the country is broke.
The bombs falling on Iran are not just explosions overseas. They are policy choices, budget choices, and moral choices.
They are one more reminder that when Washington decides something matters, the money moves.
Americans have heard the same speech about healthcare for years. Universal coverage is too expensive. Single payer is unrealistic. Lowering costs is too complicated. Covering everyone would blow up the budget. Helping people afford prescriptions, doctor visits, emergency care, and treatment is always framed as some impossible dream the richest country on earth just cannot manage.
Yet when it comes to war, the money appears almost instantly.
Reuters reported on March 10 that the Trump administration told Congress the first two days of the U.S. war with Iran cost about $5.6 billion in munitions alone. That’s not the full cost of the war, not deployments, logistics, maintenance, replacement stockpiles, or the long tail that always follows these operations. That is just the bombs and missiles in the opening phase.
That number should stop people cold, because when Americans ask for healthcare, Washington gives them a lecture about restraint. When the war machine asks for money, Washington opens the vault.
That is the real story here, not just that the bombs are expensive or that war drains public resources. It is the speed, the ease, and the total lack of hesitation. Billions can be committed to destruction in days, while millions of Americans are still expected to live with rationed insulin, delayed appointments, shrinking provider networks, and the quiet terror that one bad diagnosis could wreck their finances.
If you want to understand what is broken in this country, start there.
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America is not broke. America is choosing.
The lie underneath so much of our politics is that this country does not have the money. That is nonsense.
The United States is not poor. It is not scraping the bottom of the couch cushions to keep the lights on. The issue has never been whether the resources exist. The issue is where they go, who controls them, and whose suffering gets treated like background noise.
The federal government can find billions for bombs because the system is designed to treat war as urgent. Healthcare, meanwhile, is treated as optional, negotiable, and forever one committee hearing away from maybe, someday, if the math works out.
The math already tells a different story.
CMS says U.S. healthcare spending reached $5.3 trillion in 2024, or $15,474 per person, amounting to 18.0% of GDP. In other words, America is already spending a staggering amount on healthcare. We do not have a scarcity problem. We have a priorities problem.
The distinction matters.
When politicians say healthcare for all is unaffordable, what they usually mean is not that the money does not exist, but rather that they do not want to reorganize who pays, who profits, and who gets guaranteed care.
That is a very different argument.
Americans are already paying an outrageous price.
This is where elite political language becomes a dodge.
People hear “universal healthcare,” and opponents immediately start screaming about cost, as if Americans are currently gliding through a cheap and efficient system. However, millions of families are already paying enormous sums into a healthcare machine that still leaves them exposed.
KFF reports that employer-sponsored family health coverage averaged $26,993 in 2025, with workers directly contributing about $6,850 toward that premium.
That is before the deductible, the copays, and the out-of-network bill. It is before the prescription that somehow is not covered the way you thought it was, before the ambulance ride, and before the scan a doctor says you should not delay, but your checking account says otherwise.
That is what makes this whole debate so infuriating.
Washington tells working families that healthcare is too expensive to guarantee, while those same families are already paying a fortune for coverage that does not reliably protect them.
They are paying for insurance and still afraid to use it. They are paying premiums and still postponing care. They are paying into a system that can bankrupt them anyway.
That is not security. That is extortion with paperwork.
Then those same households turn on the news and learn the government just spent $5.6 billion on munitions in two days. Of course people are angry. That anger is not irrational. It is one of the sanest reactions available.
This is a kitchen-table crisis, not a policy seminar.
Healthcare debates in Washington are often conducted in a language designed to hide human reality.
There is a lot of talk about markets, subsidies, efficiencies, provider incentives, and budget baselines. Some of that matters, but most Americans do not experience healthcare as a spreadsheet. They experience it at the kitchen table.
They experience it when a spouse says, “Let’s wait and see if it gets worse.” They experience it when a parent cuts pills in half to make the refill last or a family with insurance still sets up a payment plan with the hospital. They experience it when a rural hospital closes, and suddenly an emergency means an extra forty-five minutes on the road. They experience it when someone keeps going to work sick because missing a paycheck is one problem, and seeing a doctor is another.
That is the real country, and in that country, the gap between what Washington says is impossible and what Washington does without blinking is impossible to miss.
War gets speed. Care gets excuses. That is the pattern.
Single payer is not magic. It is a choice.
Let’s keep this honest.
No, a short military operation does not by itself fund universal healthcare. U.S. healthcare spending is measured in trillions per year, while even expensive military actions usually begin in the billions. A bombing campaign is not a full healthcare financing plan.
However, that does not weaken the argument. It clarifies it.
The real point is that our leaders keep claiming healthcare is fiscally out of reach while constantly proving that when something powerful interests want is on the line, billions can materialize almost overnight. That is why the contrast matters.
Yes, a single-payer system could be cheaper overall than the one we have now, even while costing the federal government much more directly. That sounds confusing only because opponents count on people blurring two different things: total national healthcare spending and federal spending. They are not the same.
Under a single-payer system, Washington would take on costs that employers and households currently pay through premiums, deductibles, and out-of-pocket expenses. Federal spending would rise sharply. CBO has said federal health subsidies under illustrative single-payer systems could be $1.5 trillion to $3.0 trillion higher in 2030 than under current law.
However, that does not automatically mean the country as a whole would spend more. CBO also found that total national healthcare spending could either fall by about $0.7 trillion or rise by about $0.3 trillion, depending on how the system is designed.
That is the key distinction.
If your premium disappears, your deductible disappears, and your taxes go up instead, politicians will call that a giant increase in government spending. On the federal books, they are right. However, for ordinary people, the more important question is simpler: what are you paying in total, and are you finally safe when you get sick?
Importantly, when employers and individuals have to spend less on healthcare, they can spend more on other priorities. Employers can pay more. Individuals, as a result, pay more in taxes, but also spend more in their communities.
That is the question Washington works hardest to avoid.
War is treated as serious. Care is treated as sentimental.
This may be the ugliest habit in American politics.
War is framed as realism. Healthcare is framed as idealism. Weapons are treated as a necessity. Care is treated like a wish list. Military spending is discussed in terms of toughness, resolve, deterrence, and national credibility. Healthcare is discussed like a burden, a giveaway, and a dangerous indulgence that grown-ups cannot possibly support.
That framing is not an accident. It is how power teaches the public what to respect.
Bombs are supposed to sound responsible. Insulin is supposed to sound expensive. That is why budgets matter so much. They expose what speeches try to hide.
A budget tells you what a government fears, what it protects, and what it is willing to let people live without, and the numbers keep delivering the same verdict: this country can move mountains when it wants to fund force. It suddenly becomes paralyzed when people ask it to fund care.
The scandal is not just the cost. It is the priority.
The cleanest version of this argument is also the hardest to dodge.
No, every defense dollar cannot simply be magically snapped into a healthcare dollar. No, one war appropriation is not the same as building a lasting national health system. But yes, the same political establishment that demands austerity from ordinary people practices urgency for war.
That is the scandal.
They tell working families to be realistic. They tell patients that guarantees are too expensive. They tell the public the nation cannot afford basic medical security. Then they somehow manage to spend billions on munitions in 48 hours.
Reuters also reported that congressional sources expected the White House to seek around $50 billion in additional war funding, with some already suggesting that number could prove too low. That is not a country without money. That is a country making choices about whose pain counts.
If you are one of the millions of Americans delaying care, juggling medical debt, staying in a job for the insurance, or hoping nothing serious happens before the next paycheck, you already know how those choices land— not as theory or ideology, but as pressure in the chest, dread. and one more bill on the counter.
The question Washington never wants asked
The bombs falling on Iran should force one question onto every kitchen table in America: If Washington can find billions this fast to destroy, why can it never move with the same urgency to heal?
That is not a radical question. It is not simplistic. It is the most honest question in this debate.
Until the country answers it, Americans will keep being told the same lie: that there is no money for healthcare, no way to guarantee care, no room in the budget to stop medical insecurity from grinding people down. Yet that is not what the pattern shows. The pattern shows there is money, capacity, and that the government can move quickly, decisively, and at scale when the priority is high enough.
What it has lacked is not ability. What it has lacked is the will to treat the health and survival of ordinary people with the same urgency it brings to war. Until that changes, millions of Americans will keep learning the same brutal lesson over and over again: When power says there is no money for your care, what it usually means is that the money is already spoken for.
Just not for you.
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Sources:
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. “NHE Fact Sheet.”
Congressional Budget Office. How CBO Analyzes the Costs of Proposals for Single-Payer Health Care Systems That Are Based on Medicare’s Fee-for-Service Program. Working Paper 2020-08. December 2020.
KFF. “Annual Family Premiums for Employer Coverage Rise 6% in 2025, Nearing $27,000, with Workers Paying $6,850 Toward Premiums Out of Their Paychecks.” October 22, 2025.
KFF. 2025 Employer Health Benefits Survey: Annual Survey. October 22, 2025.
Reuters. “Heaviest Day of Strikes Yet on Iran Despite Market Bets That Conflict May Soon End.” March 10, 2026.
NO $$$ for war; dammit
!!!!!!!!! In addition to financial, there is the VERY IMPORTANT ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUE OF WARMONGERING.
Your essay is right on, as they all are, but I want to make a request of you. It will help you frame the problem better.
The largest expense in this country is the military. It is so uncontrolled that the Pentagon cannot even pass audits. Part of the government's reason for finding reasons to find wars is to reduce the backlog, so they can buy more armaments, some of which don't work well, because Pentagon contractors pay off Congress to keep the sales going.
The second largest expense in this country is the thing you mistakenly call "healthcare." We have an American medical industry. Real countries have healthcare. The American medical industry commonly has little of nothing to do with anyone's health. It is about moving money from wherever it is to providers, other vendors, and insurance companies.
Two fundamental, and repeatedly demonstrated, facts should never be forgotten. This country spends far more money on the American medical industry than real countries spend on actual health care, and our results are at or near the worst of any civilized country in the world. The reflex is to explain the inflated cost as a result of rampant overcharging, which does, without question, occur. But that doesn't explain the poor results. It's a complicated and very dysfunctional system, but it involves wrong diagnoses, "treatments" that aren't going to work, because the diagnoses are wrong, and a fundamental, if not entirely conscious, intent not to improve problems.
So, when you talk about this problem, please refer to the American medical industry. Please do not use the term "healthcare." It's deceptive, and will lead you on the wrong path. And once you realize that this is about money, and not about health, you will understand better the choice that is made not to support it in a serious way.
I have been a medical doctor for over 48 years. I have quit fighting about this, because it's vastly bigger than I am. I do my thing the way I was trained, and believe, it should be done. When I started out, doctors were more modest, if not less greedy, than they are now. It took me decades to stop feeling self-conscious about what I do. And longer than that to take various people's advice to "go public" on google. You can look me up as Alfred G Jonas MD, and you will see what my patients say: what it's like to be downwind of me.