Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's estimated cost last week for President Donald Trump's senseless and ceaseless war in Iran got me thinking about priorities.

Hegseth, testifying in Congress on July 21, said five months of war had cost America $37.5 billion, and he was asking for an additional $67 billion to keep fighting Iran.

I have a reflexive question when I see colossal numbers like that in government spending: What could that have paid for instead?

Here's the answer: Millions of Americans could have kept their health insurance.

Trump is happy to waste money that could have helped Americans

Trump, who campaigned in 2024 on a promise of making health care more affordable, sided with his Republican allies in Congress in allowing federal subsidies in place since 2021 for the Affordable Care Act – known as Obamacare – to expire at the end of 2025.

The Congressional Budget Office in September predicted that keeping those subsidies in place would increase the deficit by about $350 billion over a decade – so $35 billion per year – and also would have added 3.8 million Americans enrolled in Obamacare.

That means Trump just blew more money in five months of war with Iran – if you can believe Hegseth's numbers are accurate – than it would have cost us to keep millions of Americans insured for this........

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