Yes the US could save a ton with a more efficient healthcare system. Additionally we have shockingly high costs for basic infrastructure as compared to other developed nations which could also provide savings if we could streamline that.

For the economic impact of austerity there has been a lot of good scholarship about this recently. Check out Austerity in Crisis?: A Narrative Review of Its Economic, Social, and Political Effects in Times of Crisis https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.10449