My wife is a Fed in charge of the economics of national health . On a good day she can save the country a million or 2 or recommend what needs to be done to save lives. Its depressing that it gets wiped out in 25 seconds by the corporate cost of war.

Overall in the last 6 years there has been a war against research that seems to fly in the face of objectivity.
Its almost as though there is a deliberate effort to bring US scientific expertise down to a third world status.
The US ranks #23 in the advancement of certain health issues.
(irrelevant comparison -> US ranks #1 in school shootings.)
The methodology that is employed to kill research lately is to first combine research of 'apples' with 'oranges'. The second step is then to declare the project ineffective and discontinue both.

Most of the money that is "lost" in the government is due to outsourcing/ paying 20 times more money to a private corporation.
Today for example the news reported how Los Alamos outsourced there data archiving job to a private corporation. They found some of that data in print and on disk at a meth amphetamine lab in New Mexico today. I'm not saying outsourcing is a Republican crime, I'm just saying that the government used to be able to do the work 20 times cheaper.

The Republican revolution said we will shrink government!
They did. They did so well that for a couple years there was no one in Congress (experienced staffers) that even knew how to write a bill. Now it is common for private corporations to write the new laws for our Country. Then the laws are inserted without debate or oversight in the dead of night as an "ear mark".

I'm being kind when I describe Congress in these terms. It is far worse than I am privy to.