[Spooky23]

You're really off base in that assessment. The original case for Medicare was driven by the realities of life in the 50's and early sixties when medicine started advancing.

Middle class people found themselves in situations where they were forced to make choices that were either morally questionable or difficult to bear. What do you do when your parents lose their faculties and require care?

Before Medicare and Medicaid, you had three basic choices: pay for nursing care at great expense and impact you ability to provide for your kids, care for them yourself to the degree that you can (ie, cramming the kids into one bedroom and doing what you can, probably destroying your marriage in the process), or essentially discard them and allow them to die, which is morally reprehensible and hard in the soul.

Forget about the bunkum of modern politics. Do you think it is ethically or morally sound to cut off access to healthcare to the elderly? Should my father die of congestive heart failure because my family doesn't have $30k for a cardiac stent?

In my opinion, the answer is no. Society as a whole should provide some rational level of quality health care to all.