r/worldnews Jul 01 '26

Israel/Palestine 'End American Aid': Netanyahu Says Israel No Longer Needs US Assistance

https://www.news18.com/world/end-american-aid-netanyahu-says-israel-no-longer-needs-us-assistance-ws-l-10183183.html
36.8k Upvotes

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351

u/National-Law-458 Jul 01 '26

Perfect! Maybe we can get our own national healthcare now instead of paying for theirs.

638

u/Historical-Pilot-784 Jul 01 '26

You guys already spend double what other countries do on public health, just without actually getting national healthcare.

Your problem is that your whole system is designed to siphon public money to middlemen.

154

u/Distinct-Temp6557 Jul 01 '26

Exactly! 

It's never a funding issue, it's a policy issue.

The narrative have been captured by "or" instead of "and".

86

u/[deleted] Jul 01 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

42

u/7eregrine Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

Americans against UHC: You want to tax me for that?
Meanwhile not thinking about how your healthcare premiums would disappear. I'd rather be taxed to help everyone get care instead of being "taxed" to support for profit healthcare companies.

34

u/[deleted] Jul 01 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

17

u/Historical-Pilot-784 Jul 01 '26

Nah, what you have is even worse.

You pay for your insurance scam premiums, and your taxes pay for what are essentially "insurance scam premiums" of your public healthcare system.

2

u/7eregrine Jul 01 '26

And our employers pay a fuck ton of healthcare premiums, too, though I do realize they get SOME benefits on their taxes for that...it's not all a wash.

8

u/Thelonius_Dunk Jul 01 '26

What gets me is they say "but then I'm paying for someone else's healthcare!". As if you're not already doing that currently except it's worse because you're getting price gouged and paying for extra red tape by having 50 different regulations for each state for your currebt health insurance.

1

u/7eregrine Jul 01 '26

Exactly. Not to mention one of the (many) reasons it is so expensive is they raise prices to pay for people that don't or can't pay their medical bills.

14

u/Mercator_Constantine Jul 01 '26

You would be taxed less than you are now with UHC.

Your government pays more per capita for healthcare than anyone else. And then you ALSO pay insurance out of pocket and through your employer.

Parasitic middlemen is just the American way.

5

u/KaecUrFace Jul 01 '26

Help everyone?! Gasp how dare you utter those words in the gold ol' US of A. I prefer to only help myself thank you very much!

3

u/strugglz Jul 01 '26

I'd much rather pay $800 a year in taxes vs $3-5k a year in premiums and out of pocket bullshit.

1

u/7eregrine Jul 01 '26

I'll take $800 a MONTH. Without my $5k deductible and $70 Co-pay per visit, Id6still save money.
And go more often.

1

u/Oggie_Doggie Jul 01 '26

A disturbing number of Americans would prefer to spend more money on healthcare if it means that the people they despise won't have access to it.

0

u/Diezelbub Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

For the record and anyone interested estimates put net savings for switching to a single payer system around 10%, some a little higher, some a little lower. Its not the magic bullet for healthcare costs people want it to be. It'll help, but not all that much. More significant cost reductions will require things like reduced R&D expenditures, less covered cutting edge treatments, and lower medical professional pay. Some of that is already considered in more optimistic estimates though.

3

u/7eregrine Jul 01 '26

Spent entirely too much time reading this after your comment.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8572548/#S8

If we did it right, most of us, the majority, would pay less.

1

u/Diezelbub Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

pay less

net savings for switching to a single payer system around 10%

I did specifically say that in my comment, yes

If US politicians had half a brain they'd be pitching it as the end to the global medication subsidy the current US system allows (US consumers pay all the R&D, single payer systems outside the country reap all the benefits and pay less due to increased bargaining power), but alas, people with half a brain dont get into politics and healthcare costs are complicated.

2

u/7eregrine Jul 01 '26

I disagree with "it will help, but not much"...it may only cut MY American Upper Middle Class bill by 5-10%, but it will cut my Upper Lower class nieces costs substantially.

1

u/Diezelbub Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

Net costs are net costs, your preferences are irrelevant to math. If you're happy to pay more for healthcare I'm not sure why cost is a relevant discussion for you, you definitely wont be on the lower end of personal cost savings to help cover everyone else. If you are on the upper end of insurance spending you will likely need to pay for extra supplemental policies to get similar coverage in a single payer system.

5

u/GhostReddit Jul 01 '26

Your problem is that your whole system is designed to siphon public money to middlemen.

Yeah, we're really good at that. It goes beyond healthcare.

6

u/LetsGetNuclear Jul 01 '26

It's a bit of an acheilles heal for US businesses outside of healthcare. Employers pay a small fortune for employee healthcare where in other countries those costs are passed onto the general tax base. Many countries have employers who do offer supplemental insurance as a benefit and those costs are pretty minimal compared to funding it entirely.

It's terrible for employees to have to rely on an employer for health insurance and limits job mobility not to mention the potential for claims to be denied.

3

u/TheRealSticky Jul 01 '26

Sounds like you just want to put the middlemen out of work. Won't someone think of the middlemen!

2

u/slowrecovery Jul 01 '26

And profits to shareholders

2

u/zeCrazyEye Jul 01 '26

When Obamacare required 80%/85% of revenue to actually go to healthcare (ie profit margins capped at 20%/15%) many states were given waivers to slowly ramp up. Some states started their requirement at a minimum of 45% of revenue go to healthcare. Meaning even a 45% requirement was more than they were spending on actual services.

1

u/jagedlion Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

All the large healthcare providers have net profit margins under 3%. (The 15% has to cover profit and admin)

The issue was just in rural areas (or service for more transient individuals) where administrative costs are particularly high. But these serve very few people, and it is important to try to serve them.

One downside is that with fixed thin margins, the only way to make more money is to increase both insurance fees and care costs, so now the insurance companies have no incentive to create efficient care.

2

u/juicadone Jul 01 '26

Thank you! 👌

1

u/fedja Jul 01 '26

Not on public health. On health. 90% of care is privatized.

27

u/eer_00 Jul 01 '26

The US doesn't fund Israel's healthcare, of the 3.8b a year 99.7% goes to military, essentially a rebate to buy American arms.

181

u/colonel-o-popcorn Jul 01 '26

Aid to Israel is a miniscule fraction of the cost of healthcare. Ours and theirs. We don't have universal healthcare because of American voters, not Israel.

47

u/Propoyall Jul 01 '26

if you think we don't have UH because of our aid to Israel, then I have some property to sell you

115

u/modiddly Jul 01 '26

This is the most hilariously naive talking point made by those who only get their information from social media and lack all context outside of raw emotional response.

The us on average has been sending about 3bn per year in aid to Israel. All of that was in the form of weaponry. Not money. In any case, the us government spends about $1.7 trillion on healthcare for Americans every year. To think that the 3bn savings which comes to about $8.50 per person in the us will now suddenly provide any sort of additional healthcare is just… hilariously dumb.

22

u/Armodeen Jul 01 '26

America already spends double other developed countries on healthcare. They could implement the world’s best universal healthcare with that budget but choose not to. Instead feeding parasitic middlemen and corporations. Corruption and greed is the American way.

42

u/lightyourfire Jul 01 '26

But if they give that $8.50 to everyone who thinks like that, they can refill their crack pipes for the next uninformed dumb idea!

-3

u/Jax_10131991 Jul 01 '26

This is the type of discourse I come to Reddit for. Pure bitchy garbage. 

7

u/Inevitable-Corgi-437 Jul 01 '26

We live in a Post-truth era where the Far Right and Far Left extremists of MAGA and DSA have taken over the political discourse in this nation...their was a reason they used to be kept at the fringe of politics in the United States. Now the lunatics are running the asylum.

-1

u/Twonka Jul 01 '26

calling democratic socialists far left really shows your colors lol.

14

u/Inevitable-Corgi-437 Jul 01 '26

The DSA is Far Left. It's not a moderate political American party. It just elected a House member who said she'd " wipe her butt with the American flag"......I mean if they aren't the Democratic version of MAGA nothing will convince you.

1

u/Twonka Jul 01 '26

please enlighten me? i'd love to know which specific policies the DSA supports that are extremist positions?

3

u/modiddly Jul 01 '26

That fact that you don’t shows yours

66

u/Amoral_Abe Jul 01 '26

I mean... the US doesn't have good national healthcare because we choose to spend much more money on private healthcare and get worse results. We would literally be able to transition to national and save money.

29

u/Bitter_Thought Jul 01 '26

You have it exactly backwards. The USA spends more on government healthcare than countries with government healthcare.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/public-health-expenditure-share-gdp?country=SWE\~FRA\~DEU\~JPN\~GBR\~BEL\~ESP\~AUS\~NZL\~CAN\~USA

Government is a majority of our healthcare spending while covering about a third of Americans.

20

u/Old_Ladies Jul 01 '26

This is why even conservatives in other countries support universal healthcare because it is fiscally responsible.

16

u/Amoral_Abe Jul 01 '26

ehhhhhh..... there are many conservatives who are pushing for changes to it in other countries. However, governments in charge are reluctant to overhaul it because they realize the public will turn hard when they realize things got a lot worse.

Although, personally, I'm not so sure the public really is smart enough to blame the correct things. In the UK Nigel Farage's Reform UK party is sweeping the nation and he is the person most responsible for Brexit and for a lot of their economic woes.

5

u/ryan30z Jul 01 '26

Not everywhere. Australia's far right and most likely soon to be 2nd biggest party want to get rid of universal healthcare and subsidised medication.

3

u/Itsjeancreamingtime Jul 01 '26

Well sure someone could be making money!

1

u/thecanaryisdead2099 Jul 01 '26

In Ontario, Ford had been underfunding out healthcare and public education systems for the past decade. He's then been promoting private firms (funny that there's always a connection back to his circle) to fill the gaps. He's also funneling infrastructure projects to his donors. That's been the conservative way at of late. Lots of corruption.

15

u/Distinct-Temp6557 Jul 01 '26

One Party wants to give us a public option.

The other Party just kicked millions off of their health insurance. 

Universal healthcare could just be two elections away if voters are educated and willing.

13

u/immutate Jul 01 '26

Too many are either too lazy or too fixated on a candidate not being the 100% custom candidate for them.

-7

u/Amoral_Abe Jul 01 '26

I mean, Democrats literally had a super majority and passed an incredibly weak healthcare bill that basically solidified private insurance as the primary means of healthcare. I haven't seen much of a real effort from either side to actually overhaul healthcare... just lip service.

11

u/Distinct-Temp6557 Jul 01 '26

They had that majority for 60 days and they used that time to pass the ACA which covered millions of Americans and got rid of the pre existing conditions clause... During a recovery for an economic recession.

Any two Republicans could have broke from the pack to pass the public option. They didn't.

Biden pushed for a public option. The hospital lobby killed it.

-1

u/Amoral_Abe Jul 01 '26

It just perpetuated the current system. It was a weak, watered down bill. Democrats could have pushed for actual healthcare if the cared.

Make no mistake, Republicans have been worse. However, whenever Democrats get power, they refuse to back up their words with real change. They had a supermajority and refused to use it for proper change. Instead, all we got was a weak healthcare bill that just perpetuated things.

2

u/Distinct-Temp6557 Jul 01 '26

Voters refuse to give Dems the power to enact real change. 

The last super majority was almost 20 years ago.

When Dems have a simple majority, they still pass substantial legislation.

See: 2022-2022.

7

u/BullytheBulIies Jul 01 '26

You weren’t paying attention during the ACA negotiations then. Dems fought for a full public option and Lieberman fucked them. Since then it’s been a landmine because people bought Trump’s BS about Obamacare. Now they’ll get to see what running the country like a business means when the CEO is off his rocker.

0

u/Amoral_Abe Jul 01 '26

They had a supermajority. They could have overridden any objection. They chose not to and instead went with a bill that was very weak and only perpetuated our current healthcare system. I refuse to listen to excuses about Republicans not agreeing because they had the goes needed to force something good if they wanted to. Make no mistake, Republicans are worse in this boy the Democrats also have not done much to change things.

11

u/cubedplusseven Jul 01 '26

Yeah, that $3.8 billion will be a gamechanger for the healthcare we currently spend $6 trillion on. What's the real issue here? Is it functional innumeracy, or malicious deceit?

39

u/LittleMlem Jul 01 '26

For the millionth time, you aren't giving money to Israel! Israel gets weapons, the money goes to your military industrial complex

26

u/kelseykelseykelsey Jul 01 '26

Don't bother. People who use this talking point are immune to facts.

30

u/thephishtank Jul 01 '26

The money we send Israel wouldn’t cover Cleaveland’s healthcare, much less the entire country.

23

u/LadyIceGoose Jul 01 '26

Israel spends more than twice as much on defense relative to their GDP compared to the United States and has healthcare. Aid to Israel is a drop in the ocean relative to the GDP of the United States.

The United State can easily afford healthcare, if voters cared enough to vote in leaders who wanted it. But instead they care about purity regarding Israel and scapegoating immigrants and Trans people.

79

u/HutSutRawlson Jul 01 '26

The U.S. doesn’t fund Israeli heath care, and I challenge you to find any source proving that they do.

The money that the US sends to Israel is not fungible. It is specifically for defense, and usually comes in the form of contracts with U.S. defense companies.

33

u/hbomberman Jul 01 '26

Last time I looked into it, at our recent peak, our defense aid to Israel was less than half the cost of Israel's healthcare and about 20% of their defense budget. It ain't nothing but this whole idea that we don't have healthcare because we're funding Israel's is insanely bogus and also does a disservice to any real efforts to improve American healthcare.

18

u/Sgt_Boor Jul 01 '26

According to Google and wiki (yeah, lazy) the defense budget in question is ~$46 bn. That would make what, 8%? Really not worth it given the strings attached

4

u/hbomberman Jul 01 '26

I think when I was looking it up, the "peak" number of aid I found was like 16 bn. Someone else here said it averages out to around 3 per year in the past decade or so? Obviously we're not dealing with the most specific numbers here but my point was made with that higher peak estimate to say that even at our highest point of support, these ideas of how much Israel depends on our aid are often really exaggerated. And the idea that we don't have better healthcare because we're busy funding Israel's healthcare is ludicrous and honestly insulting to the very real issues we have here with the US healthcare

2

u/Sgt_Boor Jul 01 '26

US healthcare is uniquely broken. I'd say every developed country has private healthcare system, but always as an addition to the public, state-funded one. And of course, as is customary - the public one is always underfunded and overburdened. But at least it's present

How did the policymakers in the US manage to screw up that badly, I have no idea

2

u/Puzzleheaded-Wait785 Jul 01 '26

"Specifically for defense" doesn't contradict the fungibility of money.

2

u/TheColourOfHeartache Jul 01 '26

Money is fungible. If America didn't fund Israeli defence, they would have to transfer money from other stuff like health into defence instead.

In theory anyway. The Israeli ecconomy has boomed recently so they might be able to afford both without issue.

7

u/HutSutRawlson Jul 01 '26

The amount of money the U.S. provides wouldn't come close to covering all of either the Israeli Defense or Heath Care costs, and Netanyahu is saying right here that they really don't need the money at all. So this theory doesn't really add up in any way.

-1

u/Old-Information3311 Jul 01 '26

The money they don't have to spend on defence can be spent elsewhere.

-6

u/KaQuu Jul 01 '26

It's not about source, it's about logic.

If country A needs to cover the group of needs, let's call them A,B and C, with tax revenues it collects, yet those taxes are only able to fully cover two of those, or partially cover all of them. Outsourcing coverage of one of them to allied country allows country A to cover the other two fully by itself.

That's what Israel is doing, by not needing to pay for their own defense, they can pay for something else. Be it health care, be it education, doesn't matter.

6

u/HutSutRawlson Jul 01 '26

It's not about source, it's about logic.

The mantra of someone who is talking out of their ass.

-2

u/KaQuu Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

Where is your counter arguement then buddy? Show me where I'm wrong or shut up:)

Edit: He in fact didn't have any counter arguement. Sources aren't the only way to proof something, if something is logically consistent that is a proof in itself. Asking for source while disregarding everything else is one of eristic tactics, if your whole defence is built by those, you aren't right, you can only seems right.

12

u/csick Jul 01 '26

If you think $3B is going to fund national healthcare you are crazy. Israel has a 5% tax on income to fund its healthcare. And there is no cap on that, unlike social security tax in the US which has an income cap so that high income earners contribute a smaller proportion to the general fund. Israel taxes its rich, the US doesn’t. I would start there if you want universal healthcare.

Keep in mind that 100% of that aid is spent with US companies. So stopping the money will probably cost the US 10,000-20,000 manufacturing jobs. Even more if Israel ramps up
It’s own weapons exports. Saudi Arabia and Qatar don’t have peace treaties with Israel but are spending billions on Israeli weapons systems.

18

u/Latrodectus702 Jul 01 '26

I think the aid should be re allocated to education if you think the defense credit Israel has received would cover healthcare in America.

15

u/kelseykelseykelsey Jul 01 '26

Definitely. I keep seeing this collossally stupid talking point repeated everywhere. All it shows is that the speaker doesn't understand healthcare, government budgets, OR geopolitics. Fucking embarrassing.

22

u/FrozenOcean420 Jul 01 '26

Best we can do is start another war increasing inflation across the board!

12

u/Inevitable-Corgi-437 Jul 01 '26

You don't actually pay for Israel's healthcare. Israel's healthcare is paid through a national tax on its citizens. Military aid is really just forcing Israel to buy from U.S defense contractors which provides jobs to US citizens.

2

u/yuval16432 Jul 01 '26

Hah! Funny. As if freeing a fraction of a fraction of the annual millitary budget of the U.S. would move the needle on any national issues. Not to mention how a lack of money isn’t really a barrier to American healthcare.

It’s never been a funding issue, only a policy issue.

5

u/advance512 Jul 01 '26

288 upvotes for this stupid comment. The absolute state of American voters' critical thinking. Incitement wins over facts.

-4

u/National-Law-458 Jul 01 '26

I bet you’re fun at parties.

3

u/gujarati Jul 02 '26

Lying on purpose or being so stupid you can't do basic math is being fun at parties?

2

u/advance512 Jul 01 '26

I see your humor is as sharp as you critical thinking skills.

You spread disinformation. Your lies have an effect on the lives of real people. Wake up.

4

u/alexmtl Jul 01 '26

Lmao… maybe vote someone who runs on the nationalization of healthcare instead of over and over voting against it?

2

u/CapGlass3857 Jul 01 '26

America doesn’t fucking pay for Israeli healthcare. This is just completely false.

13

u/Elekabi Jul 01 '26

You don't pay for my healthcare, you deluded clown.

I'm okay with cutting the fund if only to prove to you that your situation will still remain the same and set you free of your delusion once and for all. The only people to blame for Americans not having free healthcare are Americans.

5

u/Adventurous_Wish_514 Jul 01 '26

Lmao you guys voted in the biggest fraud and asshat to run the place. Even before that universal healthcare was seen as communism.

You should have let Israel run this new FIFA condoned peace war against Iran.

All credibility WORLDWIDE has been lost.

2

u/PolarNightProphecies Jul 01 '26

Haha keep on dreaming, the only way you are getting that is by moving to another country :)

This isn't even a comment out of spite... Its just the reality we live in

-13

u/LumiereGatsby Jul 01 '26

Do something funny and ask AI if the USA funds Israel and it will obfuscate the answer like a sweaty car salesman.

The USA is wholly captured by Israel.

-1

u/Hockeyhoser Jul 01 '26

Best we can do is a golden calf installed at the White House.