| ▲ | dccoolgai 6 hours ago |
| 3 generations of wealth poured into the most expensive military in recorded history - the reason that we don't have health care, clean energy, decent social safety nets and so many other things... and they can't even control a small stretch of water. What a waste. |
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| ▲ | simonh 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| The health care issue in the USA isn't due to lack of funding, the US spends more on health care per person than any other country, double that of many European countries with single payer systems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea... The costs of medicare, medicaid and CHIP to tax payers are about what most Europeans pay in tax for universal health care, but then they also need to pay for health insurance for themselves. As for controlling Hormuz, the US military absolutely could control Hormuz. I'm confident it's quite capable of it. It's that the US public wouldn't support the immense cost in lives and treasure it would take to do it, and maintain that control. No other military could even try, but the the USA could. It's not a matter of lack of military capacity. |
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| ▲ | ndsipa_pomu 2 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > As for controlling Hormuz, the US military absolutely could control Hormuz I don't see how they could manage that without a full-scale invasion and control of Iran. It's far too easy for Iran to launch drones/torpedoes from small watercraft or from nearby land. I expect they could control Hormuz for a while, but it would be very expensive and I'd expect the logistics to break down fairly quickly if the economics doesn't stop it first. | |
| ▲ | irishcule 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > the US military absolutely could control Hormuz. I'm confident it's quite capable of it. It's that the US public wouldn't support the immense cost in lives and treasure it would take to do it, and maintain that control I never understood these kinds of arguments and they always come from those defending US military might. Either they can do it or they cannot, if "the US public wouldn't support the immense cost in lives and treasure it would take to do it" is true, which it appears to be, then the US Military cannot control Hormuz. | | |
| ▲ | steveBK123 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Right I think its only an interesting argument in separating existential vs non-existential threats to the country. So it means we aren't fighting in Iran the way we would in defending a hypothetical invasion of the lower 48 states, great. But does it mean we'd fight any differently in the South China Sea, a Russian incursion into Poland, etc. Unclear, and presidential whim based. |
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| ▲ | scoofy an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > The costs of medicare, medicaid and CHIP to tax payers are about what most Europeans pay in tax for universal health care, but then they also need to pay for health insurance for themselves. People always say this, but I suspect Americans are more unhealthy in general and actually need more healthcare per person. We have a development pattern where people barely walk, but less walk or cycle to work. | |
| ▲ | nwatson 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Health insurance company margins are 3% to 5%. The book America’s Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Back-Room Deals, and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare System (2015) by journalist Steven Brill blames mostly wasteful practices in hospitals, pharma and device manufacturers, government and corporate health administration costs. | | |
| ▲ | ethbr1 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Not to dismiss your point, but the US healthcare system has one meta problem. Complexity. There are too many parties. There are too many bespoke party-party contract. There are too many new middle-parties being created, with their own contracts. There are too many systems. There's too much tech debt. That's a reason improvements to the US healthcare system have generally been via HHS/CMS imposing standardization mandates ('or no Medicare payments'). But providers, facilities, and insurers (most operating on low margins) can't be collectively more meta-efficient without simplifying the system. Single payer / Medicare for all is a critical start not because of coverage, but because of simplicity. There are so many intractable problems with the current system simply by virtue that changing anything about them requires 100s of parties to update 10,000s of party-party contracts and interfaces. That's the biggest source of waste in the current system: constant duplicative re-engineering. | |
| ▲ | orwin 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | US health insurance margins are thinner than European private insurance. Their administrative cost however are 9-10%, when in Europe (or really, France and Germany, I haven't looked elsewhere) they are 5-8%. The difference is probably in negotiating costs and audits. But that means that in total, for every 100 dollar paid, US insuree pay 4-10 dollar in efficiency+dividend that a European doesn't. | |
| ▲ | franktankbank 29 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Dumb argument though when UHG owns the hospitals, pharmacy and the insurance company. They can make the "profit" of any one of them be anything they want really. | |
| ▲ | simonh 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Thanks for the recommendation. |
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| ▲ | thiht 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > As for controlling Hormuz, the US military absolutely could control Hormuz They don't though | |
| ▲ | aeve890 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | >No other military could even try Iran military is trying alright. | | |
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| ▲ | rbanffy 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Soft power would have gone a long way towards furthering US interests in the Middle East. Unfortunately, it seems too late for that. By the time a new administration's diplomacy reverts the current antagonism and lack of trust, the dollar will have lost ground as the default reserve currency and financing US debt will become much more expensive than it is now, making military expenses prohibitive, but still a priority. This is usually the point the economy is flipped around into a war-based economy where all output is directed to military equipment. |
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| ▲ | _menelaus 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| What are we even talking about here? Controlling the strait? This actually means controlling so much land around the strait that Iran can't launch missiles or drones at ships. Essentially conquering all of Iran by ground invasion. The USA could do this, sure, but we don't want to because its too stupid even for us. |
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| ▲ | wookmaster 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Even if we threw everything at it and turned it into a war economy making everything to focus on this task, we'd lose most of our influence in the rest of the world at that time and then we'd end up in a Russia situation once we control the land where we are in a non stop war with people dying the entire time we are there. There's no situation where it makes sense for us to do this or to have attacked Iran in the first place. Yeah it's stupid, though with this administration stupid seems to be the flavor they prefer. | |
| ▲ | aaomidi 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Just like how US conquered all of Vietnam and Afghanistan. US would lose a land war with Iran. They’d lose it spectacularly too. | |
| ▲ | FpUser 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | >"Essentially conquering all of Iran by ground invasion..." - you have already conquered Korea, Vietnam, etc. |
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| ▲ | svpk 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I think it's worth pointing out that the US almost certainly could have taken control of the strait. But it would have required boats in the water and boots on the ground. But that puts many more lives at risk, would have been very unpopular (much moreso then the current war situation), etc. You can't win a war purely through air superiority and bombs. That's not a new lesson but it's one the administration failed to learn through history and is apparently now failing to learn through practice). |
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