About Medicare

[Gumba Masta]

Just to check if I got this right, Medicare as I understand it so far is a unsustainable system that presents itself as free by simply masking it's cost from the eye of the individual user and instead charges a tax that is in no relation to the actual services being used?

[MrBogosity]

It's basically a Ponzi scheme, only the proceeds supposedly go to pay what is basically government medical insurance. As medical costs rise, and more and more people pay into the system, it gets harder and harder to cover everyone. It's unsustainable.

[Gumba Masta]

A case of "If something sounds too good to be true" then...
I wish there was a way of having a healthcare like that that would be sustainable.

[Lord T Hawkeye]

The mutual aid societies before government took over healthcare were very much like that.  A group of people would pool money to contract doctors to tend to their medical needs.  You could get a year of coverage for a day's wages if you shopped around.

Why were they so cheap when government healthcare is so expensive?  Because mutual aid societies were private firms who had competitors and market forces.  They had to work hard to police themselves for abusers and get their prices down or else other mutual aid societies would steal their business.

Most doctors liked them too.  They enjoyed the job security it got them and many doctors competed with each other vigorously to get those contracts.

And for those who couldn't even afford the regular fees, there were charity run mutual aid societies too.  There was something for everyone.


What the state did to healthcare was nothing short of mass murder should you ask me.