By the way, compare EU military spending to the US, not that of one country.

> The combined military expenditure of the member states amounts to just over is €192.5 billion. This represents 1.55% of European Union GDP and is second only to the €503 billion military expenditure of the United States. The US figure represents 4.66% of United States GDP.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Security_and_Defence_Po...

Unless the EU wants to have military places all over the world like the US and equally extraordinary military expenses, for whatever strange reason, far outspending anyone located near Europe, that sounds like plenty enough money for the military. Of course, it seems to me the US uses much of that money for what elsewhere might be called "socialism" and "central economic planning" because doing so directly would never fly with the American public. So it's labeled "defense" and then it's fine.

> Americans finance the drug research that pushes the world forward.

I see claims like that a lot because for some reason some (few but vocal) Americans seem to take personal offense at any suggestion something might not be "the best", I have yet to see even a bad source for it, never mind a good one.

I can tell you German health care is shit too in so many ways that I'd be hard pressed to recommend it as a model to any nation, but according to the actual data it seems it's still better than the US system. Disclosure: I'm German but lived and worked in the US for a decade.

I also think cost alone is not a good path of argument. Costs on an economy level are circular - they are somebody else's income. Also, much of health care is "optional", whatever level people want. The more important point is what does that money flow achieve. According to the analysis I am aware of it achieves less, in the US, on average.

And US military spending since WWII wasn't and isn't high out of the goodness of American's hearts either. The US spend that much because it was beneficial at least from the point of view of those who got to make those spending decisions, and I'm sure they didn't have "foreigners" interests in mind but their own.

Further, that R&D is often more production development of drugs or drug families first identified in public research efforts. The pipeline for which has been drying up in recent years because of gov't austerity - and in response the billions per drug brought to market number has been going up for the commercial drug company efforts.

Most of the important deep tech happens in university done by post grads, not by for-profit companies.

Drug development in the US is expensive due to the dysfunctionality that exists within the FDA.

Where do you think those European drug companies get the bulk of their revenues from to do that R&D in the first place?

They make their money off the U.S market!

> Drug development in the US is expensive due to the dysfunctionality that exists within the FDA.

No, drug development is expensive because it's expensive. The EMA & co. are not substantially different in their requirements and expense than the FDA is. Regardless, even still, half of the R&D conducted in the entire world is funded directly by the US.