Germany doesn't provide free healthcare, it has a compulsory insurance purchase system. Both Germany and France spend less on both a per capita and per GDP basis on health than the US does, so they need no subsidy; in fact, their more efficient healthcare systems are a vastly larger subsidy to the rest of their welfare system than US’s defense spending is. (Moving defense spending from their current levels up to US levels would cost them 1-2% of GDP, moving healthcare spending from current levels up to US levels would cost 8-9% of GDP.)

The reason the US can't afford the rest of a European-style welfare system isn't the (huge, but still not a big deal in this instance) amount the US spends on defense, but the mind-bogglingly enormous amount the US wastes on the most wasteful and inefficient healthcare system in the world, which would be fairly in line, in per GDP costs, with many universal healthcare systems if you considered only the public expenditures, and not the (slightly larger) private share of health spending.