Every politician has a prescription to cure it. Some favor re-drawing its organization charts. Others favor local control over it. And, of course, there is the ever-popular idea of raising taxes, and throwing more money at it.

Few politicians even hint of doing away with it; Medicare is regarded as a sacred cow. It is better thought of as a sick chicken.¹ 

All the ills of Medicare, that fill newspapers and alarm those who expect to need medical care, were predicted before the scheme was ever launched! 

The predictions were brushed away as "mere theory," but now we have hard evidence. Those who resisted Medicare have been proven right. It's time to swallow hard, admit they were right, and get rid of this wealth-devouring bureaucratic nightmare.

Medicare promised unlimited, free medical care at government expense. This summary of its aims explains its failure.

When you give away something valuable for free, the demand for it rises beyond all measure. Men aren't fools; when it's raining soup, they have sense enough to grab a bucket. It takes them a while to figure out how to use the bonanza, but ingenuity is a virtue required by living, so they do catch on. Hence, the exploding costs of Medicare; low at first, then blowing up exponentially.

So we take a kid to the doctor for a bee sting. Why not? All it costs is gas for a trip to the doctor, and a bee sting can be serious. Put your mind at ease: go to the doctor.

It is said that some see a doctor just to chat. Why not? The price is right.

A similar situation cropped up in some Communist countries. They subsidized bread so heavily that it sold for less than hog feed. So, of course, bread was fed to hogs. People who wanted to eat it had to wait in line.

This explains Medicare's waiting lists. While doctors are being paid to chat and tend bee-stings, other people wait months for treatment. It would cost more to have the means available to treat people right away.

Waiting lists are Medicare's confession that there is a contradiction between "free" care and "unlimited" care. Waiting lists are rationing. People have had their lives rationed away by Medicare, although the establishment press pays little attention to this grisly fact.

Waiting lists are an attempt to preserve the illusion of free care by chiselling on the promise of unlimited care.

It was promised that Medicare would be at government expense. I doubt if many ever believed this: it was always obvious that government expense meant taxpayer expense. Today, with a total government burden of about 50% of all production, and Medicare draining away a huge chunk of that, only the terminally naive can imagine that they're not paying for it.

But "at government expense" means bureaucratic management, as opposed to profit-seeking management. So Medicare officials treat the sick with all the tender solicitude shown by the post office to its customers. Why not? What can they lose by annoying the sick? The sick don't pay them; the government does.

Bureaucratic management has a big impact on costs. Profit-seeking management always has to be concerned about pricing itself out of the market, so it keeps an eagle eye on costs. Bureaucratic management may go through occasional spasms of cost-cutting, but only when political outrage reaches the boiling point. Then it's back to free spending as usual. The bureaucracy burgeons while sick people languish on waiting lists.

We're so familiar with the evils of bureaucratic management in other industries that the fact is beyond doubt. As we've learned from those other examples, the only cure is privatization: return it to profit-seeking management.

These practical faults of Medicare are enough to discredit it, but there is a deeper moral flaw: Medicare is a fraud. It promises the impossible. Free care and unlimited care are contradictory: Medicare promises both.

Along with other welfare state schemes, Medicare is a form of Ponzi scheme. It promises big benefits from non-existent sources, and actually delivers them for a while. This lures in suckers to help pay for it all, but only for a while. When the supply of new suckers dries up, the scheme fails.² 

It is drying up. After all, would you willingly buy insurance from an outfit with no profitable assets, and half a trillion dollars in debts? 

Did the original promoters of Medicare know it was a fraud? It seems so. Why else would they have given it a legal monopoly from day one? They must have foreseen a time when people would be frantic to escape Medicare, and planned for this development by blocking the exits ahead of time. 

Of course, in blocking the exits they displayed the same disregard of ingenuity as they did in promising free care. There are ways to get out, at least partly.

Those who can afford it, can plan to go to the US for treatment (as some politicians have done). Others can buy "waiting list insurance" which sidesteps the ban on private medical insurance, and pays for US treatment when you get stuck on a Medicare waiting list. There is also "income replacement insurance" which pays off when you go to hospital.³ 

The most fundamental way of coping with the evils of Medicare is to increase your wealth. The greater your wealth, the wider your options. One of those options is buying the medical care you want.

For the time being, the poor will have to rub along with what Medicare offers them. Good luck.

Of course, abolishing Medicare would not be technically difficult. We've seen all sorts of government ventures privatized. The methods are well-known. Private insurers would trample each other in a rush to replace this failed bureaucratic monstrosity. Competition among them would drive costs down to reasonable levels. You could buy as much or as little insurance as you wanted or could afford, from anyone you liked.

All that's lacking for the abolition of Medicare is political courage. You can help to supply it by circulating this article and other articles like it. When politicians hear abolition freely discussed at the grass-roots, they'll begin to overcome their timidity.

Medicare is one sick chicken! The best cure for a sick chicken is an ax!
 

¹ This is a bit unfair to chickens. They are beasts of little worth, but not of negative worth.
² See Quackgrass Press #19, Ponzi State.
³ I'm not selling insurance, and know of these only by repute. Talk to a trustworthy insurance agent for details.

You needn't despair at the evils of Medicare—you can become a Quackgrass activist! Copy this article! Keep the original for future copies. Paper meetings with it! Paper your office! Leave a stack on your business counter! If you expect hostility, use stealth and cunning—it’ll drive your opponents wild! Be ingenious! Have fun!