Liberals hold Medicare high as the crown jewel that demonstrates how government is a good intervening force when it comes to the medical sector.  They point to numbers of how many elderly have been saved from the "cruelty" of a system that would have otherwise left them unprotected.  They claim that "government's success" in medicare demonstrates that they would be able to handle a public (government) insurance option.  They demand that the government be allowed to "compete" with private insurance agencies to essentially extend the medicare program to cover those who cannot afford the status quo insurance.  Well let us analyze the "successful" medicare system.

Where does the government get the money to support the socialized medicare program? The answer is from all of the current workers earning taxable wages.  There is no savings account that accumulates money for when you hit 65, by the time you are that old, the money that was taken out of your paychecks is long gone... spent on somebody else's medicare or social security needs.

Bernie Madoff is in prison for the rest of his life for taking the money of new investors and paying the old.  This is considered stealing, and stealing is considered immoral.  You have no argument from me here, I concede that Bernie Madoff's actions were immoral and worthy of severe punishment....

Now lets look at social security and medicare.  The government is taking from the younger working people and funneling that money to the elderly.  If you were to calculate every dollar spent on Americans over the age of 65 and compared that to all of the money spent on the youth under the age of lets say 18, the system is heavily favoring the elderly.  It isn't even close.  Now people will argue that it is a moral responsibility to take care of the elderly, it would be unjust to allow them to die because they could not afford medical services.  The government never truly addresses the variables that influence pricing in the medical sector (they unjustly blame the non-existing "free" market), and then they simply throw more welfare at the people while keeping the insurance cartels satisfied. They have succeeded in convincing the majority of people that the government is acting in their best interests, that without the government, life would be like going back to the dark ages. Survival of the fittest.

The only way that Medicare and Social Security can continue to operate is if there are enough people working and paying into the system to support the unproductive (retired) citizens. Well guess what, there is no way it can last.  Because these massive government welfare programs cost so much money (combined with all other government spending it becomes unbearable), the Fed's monetary policy has been perpetually inflationary... If the people want services, somebody has to pay for them. But... we want our cake and we want to eat it too. Well our government spends so much money that they can not make enough revenue through taxation, so they borrow and monetize debt... it is way easier politically to "solve" problems this way (they are only postponing not "solving").  This is the variable that forces manufacturing jobs over seas because the inflation makes it impossible for businesses to make a profit while at the same time being forced into paying high wages (liberals also make the mistake of defining wealth as earning high wages, and they ignore purchasing power and the cost of living)... They aren't able to compete globally because of this, and the new healthcare legislation is going to also force employers into providing benefits on top of high wages, thus guaranteeing the flight of more American jobs over seas. Smart businessmen know they can have the same factory in another country, while producing the products cheaper while at the same time paying their workers less... it is a no brainer. Liberals claim this is immoral and is an abuse of foreign laborers, but the result is cheaper consumer goods for the public. Meaning the less wealthy can afford more than they would have been able to if cut off from the market.  It is a net gain for the world, not a loss. But back to America, when the economy sheds private sector jobs, the government loses revenue for things like Social Security and Medicare... and all of a sudden we find ourselves in a situation where there are not enough people working to pay into these programs. The economy is poisoned with debt, and now the people who have become dependent on government services need it more than ever... but they can't get it.

You see the few decades that the government has been taking from the workers and paying for the elderly was theft in the same way that Bernie Madoff was found guilty.  These programs were never going to survive long enough for the people who were paying into them a generation or two later to benefit.  But we are still paying for them, and nobody likes to talk about it.  The liberals seem to have a lot of trouble with "profit" these days, but they have no problem with the recipients of these welfare benefits profiting off of those working hard just to get by in a system that will not be there for them when they need it in the future. The unfunded liabilities of social security and medicare is approaching 10's of trillions of dollars (40 as the cartoon above shows), that is more than enough to put enormous pressure on the fed to inflate and bring the dollar to its breaking point.  Is it logical to claim that Madoff's ponzi scheme was immoral but these unsustainable government programs funded in just the same ponzi scheme model are exactly the opposite? Can you honestly have the audacity to stand and claim that medicare is an example of government success?

If government stealing from one generation to the benefit of an older, while destroying the future prosperity of the nation is defined as a "success," then maybe you have a case.

my blog: Your World Unspun