As a contrasting question, how many lives could be saved if the money was spent elsewhere? The 'black budget' figure of $50B is just shy of 1/3rd of the total

As a contrasting question, how many lives could be saved if the money was spent elsewhere? The 'black budget' figure of $50B is just shy of 1/3rd of the total cost of universal health care in the UK, which equates to about 20 million people. A quick google gives a figure of ~22,000 [0] people dying from a lack of insurance, out of a population of 157 million (25-65), of which about 30 million were uninsured. Now this is more complicated because the uninsured are likely to be poorer, so possibly more longer term issues and the UK figure covers everyone (not just 25-65) which adds cost. I'm not too interested in creating a perfect comparison, but I feel it's fairly reasonable to say that not spending that money on healthcare costs on the order of tens of thousands of lives per year. If it's 12,000 then that equates to 4 9/11 incidents per year (in lives) I know these can't be compared quite like this but I think it does emphasise the sheer scale we're talking about. [0] http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411588_uninsured_dying.pdf http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411588_uninsured_dying.pdf