"Medicaid"--an instructional tale of how compassion and virtue-signaling can quickly cost $600 BILLION per year

The Left wanted to put the government in charge of all medical care.  So in 19XX they got the nose of the camel into the tent by starting "Medicare" for Americans 65 and older.  Cuz we love our "elders" and want them to have a comfortable retirement.

Of course with that settled the Left neatly pivoted to the next most sympathetic group--the poor--and came up with "Medicaid."  People of all ages could qualify for this super new program, you just couldn't make more than 125% of the "poverty line" (which increased every year).

You will be absolutely amazed to learn that initial projections were that only a few million people qualified.  But much to the surprise of politicians, when you offer "free shit" to people making less than X, you suddenly find that your estimates of how many people made less than X were WAY off!

So when Medicaid started in 1966 the entire program cost about $4 per U.S. resident, and paid about $200 per "enrollee" per year.  Fabulous, eh?

By 1971 the program was costing double the estimates of just six years earlier.  Which is really shocking cuz doze estimates were made by certified "experts"--who were still claiming they were right.

Well...you'd be amazed how fast the word spread that you could get "free" medical care if you just made less than X.  So two years ago 33 million people were enrolled in Medicaid.  The program was costing nearly $750 per resident and paying enrollees an average of $6,000 each per year.  

But that was way back in 2000.  Today, after duh Dem shutdown of duh whole ekonomy cuz of duh chyna virus, wif lotsa pipo losin' dere jobz, duh experts say 100 million 'Mericans are now enrolled in Medicaid--three times the number just two years ago.

If we don't see ANY increase in per-enrollee costs, and use the same $6,000 per enrollee per year as in 2000, the program would cost a staggering $600 BILLION this year. 

According to one estimate, now that people are slowly going back to work in the faaaabulous Democrat economy, at least 21 million of the 100 million people on Medicaid earn too much money to qualify.  So Leftists wail that they might be "dis-enrolled."  That's wishful thinking.  Instead they'll just magically report lower earnings in order to stay on the "free healthcare" gravy train.

When the cost of a program triples in two years, one would think responsible "leaders" would act to rein in the exploding cost.  But of course the "free medical care" lobby is far too powerful for more than a handful of congresspersons to back any effective change to cut costs.

What you're seeing here is called the "Cloward-Piven strategy."

For young Americans, that's an explicit strategy first described in 1966 by two communist professors at the Columbia School of Social Work (of course).  (With characteristic pro-communist camouflage Wiki calls 'em "social activists").  

The strategy was to overload the welfare system and cause it to collapse, which they believed would make it easy to push through the "guaranteed annual income" and "income redistribution" they wanted.

It was a strategy eagerly embraced by the Left and all its agents.

"See, what we need to do is to give every American below 150% of the poverty line $5,000 per month, jus' fo' bein' alive.  That'll motivate em to...uh...um...well we're still trying to figure that out, but we're sure it'll motivate 'em to do something.  And that will be good for the economy, eh?  Cuz if we gibs 'em $5,000 per month, states can stop worrying about how to fund $1,500 a month in welfare!  WOOT!

An' dat don't include duh reparations.  We gonna neegotiatie dat separately.

See, dis beez why we Democrats are rulin' duh preznitsy an' bof chambers of duh congress!  Cuz we is duh smaht ones!  We know how to git dem votes frum all doze pipo! 

It's sad that we've come to this, but here we are.

And yesterday another 24,000 illegal aliens were allowed to enter the U.S. by the Democrats.  Yay!