You're right that health insurance isn't insurance at all. But to clarify: > What we have is an aging payment plan. We're all gonna get old, and it's gonna suc

You're right that health insurance isn't insurance at all. But to clarify: > What we have is an aging payment plan. We're all gonna get old, and it's gonna suck, and be expensive, might as well start paying now: oh guess what, you are, it's called Medicare payroll tax That would be the case if the following were true: * If Medicare's operations were purely funded by tax money, and * If the taxes people paid were proportional to their expected lifetime costs-of-care However, neither of these are true. Medicare's reimbursement rates are indirectly subsidized by private insurers (who then pass those costs on to privately-insured patients in the form of higher monthly premiums and copays). And of course, the taxes are based on income, not risk profiles.