The bad news is more than 82 million Americans are having to skip meals, borrow money or cut back on utilities so they can afford health care.

The good news is the Pentagon is swimming in millions of dollars worth of ribeye steak and lobster tails, part of more than $93 billion the U.S. Department of Defense spent in September as the fiscal year closed.

So while you were putting off a necessary surgery so you could afford gas, the department overseen by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was, in one month, dropping $139,224 on 272 orders of doughnuts, according to a new report by the nonpartisan public-spending watchdog Open the Books.

It’s enough to make you want to grab a torch and pitchfork and start marching. Except marching may be out of the question if you haven’t been able to see a doctor about your chronic knee pain.

Millions of Americans are cutting other costs to pay for health care

A West Health-Gallup Center on Healthcare report released March 12 includes a survey of nearly 20,000 adults conducted from June through August. The report notes that “roughly one-third of respondents ‒ the equivalent of more than 82 million Americans ‒ said they have made at least one trade-off with daily living expenses to afford healthcare.”

Those tradeoffs ranged from prolonging current prescriptions to........

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