"it could be argued that since everyone dies anyway that all medical expenditures are a bad investment."
That's illogical. Again, it CAN come down to NET wealth gained or lost. If the person who is saved by the intervention goes on to create more net wealth than what it cost to save him, it was a win-win transaction all the way around. If not, then not.
I stressed "can", because I am not pretending that economic profitability is the only criteria by which to judge things. And knock on effects can be complicated and subject to different value chain estimates.
So, if you can look back at the situation and say "I am GLAD we spent our Constitutional rights and our children's future in order to fight a war in Vietnam, what can I say? What if I said that if we HADN'T done that, we wouldn't have collapsed our own Constituion and economy post 1971 -- and, thus, enabled Communist ideology to flourish in the US in 2020. Would you still chose the fighting over the thinking?
Wars are MISTAKES and WASTES. By that I mean, they may be forced upon you, but otherwise there WAS pretty much always a wiser path which, if taken earlier, would have pre-empted the war and the waste.
They are only profit centers in a zero sum game. Humanity needs to grow beyond zero sum thinking.
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