Do you think of the military as separate from the government?

Please state what country you are from and/or live in.

I’m American. I will go ahead and add that I mostly grew up just outside of DC (our nation’s capital) in Maryland. To me the military is part of the government. My parents worked for the government growing up, and my father was a commissioned officer with full military benefits. I received my medical care at Bethesda Naval hospital, we shopped on base sometimes, we stayed on base while on vacation sometimes, and my parents still utilize military services since my father retired. My military medical care in my mind is government run medical care. To me military people are employed by the government, just like employees at FDA, HHS, NIH, NIST, etc. I am not trying to minimize the risks many soldiers take to protect America, I am only talking about it in terms of employment.

How do you think about it? it seems to me a lot of people feel the military is so wonderful and soldiers and Generals are celebrated. We want good medical and mental health care for the military, but then the same people don’t want the government to run health care for civilians, don’t want to support better mental health services for civilians, have no respect or support for the work FDA and NCI do for America and the world. I hear how the government never invented or discovered anything, which is completely false. Employees of the government invent and discover all the time.

I’m not idealistic about government run agencies, mistakes are made, and things can be improved, but there is a lot of good done by these agencies also. Same with military healthcare, lots of things wrong with it, but some things about that system are so so much better than private health care. Private business also has good and bad.

I don’t see how people separate military from government in their minds, if you do maybe you can explain it to me.