Yes. That is certainly true about healthcare, the US government spends comparable amount of EU governments per capita, the issue is basically with higher costs (and holes uninsured people can fall through).
For example, about urban renewal, currently the Austrian government rarely pays 100% of the cost of an apartment house and I think the US government often does, “projects” etc. The Austrian method is to have non-profit co-ops where tenants are members build them and the government pays 30%, gets to hand out 30% of the apartments on a social basis (wohnservice.at) basically mixing poor and non-poor people, to avoid the formation of ghettoes, although they are not the poorest people because they pay full rent. They don’t pay the starting capital. Because the 70%, normal members-tenants need to cough up about 20% of the value of the apartment, roughly $25K to 50$K in advance. This is what the government buys out for 30% who get it socially/are poor, so actually my calculation was wrong, the government does not even pay 30% of the total cost. But they pay normal rents, which means for a two-bedroom roughly 60% of the unofficial monthly minimum wage. This means they are not the poorest poor actually. At any rate, the leverage here is fairly low spending giving a significant hand up to the non-poorest poor and incentivizing these building projects.
Yes. That is certainly true about healthcare, the US government spends comparable amount of EU governments per capita, the issue is basically with higher costs (and holes uninsured people can fall through).
For example, about urban renewal, currently the Austrian government rarely pays 100% of the cost of an apartment house and I think the US government often does, “projects” etc. The Austrian method is to have non-profit co-ops where tenants are members build them and the government pays 30%, gets to hand out 30% of the apartments on a social basis (wohnservice.at) basically mixing poor and non-poor people, to avoid the formation of ghettoes, although they are not the poorest people because they pay full rent. They don’t pay the starting capital. Because the 70%, normal members-tenants need to cough up about 20% of the value of the apartment, roughly $25K to 50$K in advance. This is what the government buys out for 30% who get it socially/are poor, so actually my calculation was wrong, the government does not even pay 30% of the total cost. But they pay normal rents, which means for a two-bedroom roughly 60% of the unofficial monthly minimum wage. This means they are not the poorest poor actually. At any rate, the leverage here is fairly low spending giving a significant hand up to the non-poorest poor and incentivizing these building projects.