What: Medicare Is Free?

The usual brainless talking heads are at it again, claiming Medicare is free. This of course is part of their argument for destroying it.

Hey, brainless ones: I've been paying for my Medicare my whole working life. Just like Social Security.  So have you, presuming of course that you've been able to hold down a job at your level of stupid. Calling the programs "entitlements" like we're out there sitting around with our hands out waiting for freebies is completely missing the point. We ARE entitled to it. We've been paying for it for years.

Oh yeah, and we still are paying for it. Every month. For those uninformed among you, there is a monthly Medicare premium. It's just not the $800 per month or so it would have been the day before you aged into the program...because we've been paying in all those years while we were young and healthy enough to be out there working! We've been paying, we're still paying.

Just like every OTHER kind of insurance we get!

Get it? Medicare is an insurance program. Social Security is an insurance program. Homeowners and Renters are kinds of insurance insurance programs. Flood, Auto, Liability, FDIC, Life: all insurance programs. No pay, no benefits. Pay in, still maybe no benefits, depending on how life happens in your piece of the world. But we pay in so just in case, when life hits you hard, you're not destroyed financially. We pay in, so just in case our actions hit somebody else hard, they are not destroyed financially either. Nor are we for having been judged responsible.

You have no problem, I'm sure, in calling your insurance agent for your owed financial payout after an auto accident, right? Or to get your house rebuilt after a fire or tornado, right? And you still pay in even if nothing ever destroys your home, your car, or nobody robs your bank account. It's built in to the structure. A large pool of paid members enables the insurance company to cover the load for the individuals who need it under the terms of their contract. That's. How. Insurance. Works.

So if you happen to die before you qualify for Social Security, you've still been paying in because you're part of the national pool and if you'd qualified by staying alive long enough you'd be getting your own benefits. Same with Medicare.

Let me ask you this, those of you who think it's a good idea to destroy what you like to call "entitlements". I bet you think of yourselves a good people, right? Most of you would refer to yourselves as good Christians, or Jews, Muslims, or whatever affiliation you have. But if you destroy Medicare and Social Security, do you want millions of elderly people to become homeless? Go hungry? Become and stay ill, suffering until they die? Really?

Or are you willing to bring Granny or Grandpa back into your own homes, feed, clothe and shelter them, pay for their medical needs out of your own pockets, drive them around wherever now that they can no longer afford keeping and running a vehicle? And don't forget loving them and nurturing them - because you're such good people - and never making them feel obligated to you for having to take over the family duties now that you've taken away their "entitlements"? You know, paying from your own pockets and out of your own time and energy for what you've been calling "free"?

Are you ready to do all that?

Really?

And you think somebody's going to do it for you when it's your time?