Obamacare and Defense Spending

With Congress overseeing the ending of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare, enhanced premium tax credit (subsidies) for Americans, hiking premiums for them to buy private health care insurance, consider such economics and politics in the context of $1 trillion in defense spending. Why? Context matters, economically and politically.

Against this backdrop, ACA subsidies are 3.0 percent, or three hundredths, of $1 trillion.
To be sure, $30 billion is real money to the average U.S. citizen. But $30 billion of federal spending for ACA subsidies is a drop in the bucket of a $1 trillion defense budget.

This policy priority reflects a political economy that weakens the health care of an estimated 22 million Americans facing ACA premium hikes of 114 percent, on average, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, and strengthens the profitability of military corporations such as Lockheed Martin, RTX Corporation, Northrop Grumman, Boeing and General Dynamics. Such federal spending priorities are a kitchen table issue affecting people who vote blue, red or independent, or are non-voters.

Here’s the bottom line. Health-care insurance is a necessity, not a luxury.

In 2026, with ACA tax credits expiring, Renee Rubin Ross, a mother who lives in California and covers her family of four with Obamacare, is facing a big price hike. How big? Try $2,700 more each month to maintain health care coverage. That’s $32,400 more per year for Ross to buy ACA coverage. Where will she and millions of Americans like her find the money to pay their health care bills?

The out−of-pocket costs for mom-and-pop shops are also spiking. Shaundell Newsome is the founder of Sumnu Marketing in Las Vegas and co-chair of Small Business for America’s Future. “Refusing to extend the Affordable Care Act enhanced tax credits has abandoned us and added soaring healthcare costs to the economic crisis crushing Main Street this year,” he said in a statement. “We’re beyond disappointed that 5 million small business owners are now almost certain to see their premiums double.”

We return to the $1 trillion annual defense budget. That figure amounts to just over $2.7 billion of spending on defense every day of the year. Thus, about 10 days of annual defense spending equals the $30 billion of expired Obamacare subsidies. Welcome to politics and economics in capitalist America.

The U.S. political economy reflects the money power of the top defense contractors to lobby Congress and the White House for a budget policy that drives increased military spending. There’s a bipartisan consensus, a blue and red marriage. You can’t blame only President Donald J. Trump. Visit opensecrets.org to see the proof of the spending parity in military contractors’ lobbying, a revealing Blue and Red party breakdown.

For the average U.S. citizen, there is simply no equivalent force of politics and economics in their interests regarding health and warfare spending. Big money sways policy priorities, and the average U.S. citizen is at a distinct disadvantage. That’s not a law of nature, just an indication of a disorganized American working class, politically speaking.

Health care spending is a constructive means of improving people’s living conditions. Think of regular check-ups, ranging in age from infants to seniors, who receive care from doctors and nurses. Think of mental health services, a crucial component of health and wellness, for those in need, from traumatized military veterans to sexual assault victims. There are also emergency room visits for accidents and unexpected medical situations such as strokes.

There are coalitions at the state level that do great work to improve funding for health care. One example is Health Access California. Its advocacy has in part resulted in lower-cost insulin via CalRX. This means $11 per pen for Californians.

Meanwhile, defense spending is a destructive force that worsens people’s lives at home and abroad. I close with a list, a partial one, of the foreign places where U.S. armaments directly and by proxy lead to the loss of lives and limbs.

Just ask the relatives of Venezuelans maimed and murdered during the U.S. early morning attack and kidnapping of the nation’s elected president and his wife recently. For that matter, ask the family members of the fishermen who lost their lives due to aerial strikes from U.S. forces in the Caribbean over the past few months. Then there are families and friends of those injured and killed by U.S. drone strikes in Somalia. U.S. defense spending has been and remains despite a “ceasefire” a central part of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

Meanwhile, there is talk in the U.S. Senate about resuming the expired ACA enhanced tax credits. Shifting federal spending from a $1 trillion defense budget to funding Americans’ health care is in all likelihood not a part of this political talk given the corporate-dominant political economy of the country’s military-industrial complex and imperialist foreign policy.

A solution to this destructive situation is movement politics, popular mobilization and organization of working people in their interests as a class force for peace and social justice, domestically and globally. A few groups that come to mind are Code Pink, the Poor People’s Campaign, Public Citizen and Repairers of the Breach.

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