I don't order items off the "Senior Menu" in restaurants, not because I'm pretending not to be old when I am, but because I don't want others subsidizing my purchases. If I get a break, someone else gets a "non-break" as it were. Maybe when I'm on a fixed income and things are truly tight financially, but not now while I'm gainfully employed and can afford to buy my own lunch. While trying to figure out a way to retire ASAP I noticed that, on a retirement income, my wife and I could get insurance for $33 a month. That's thirty three dollars. not $330.00. This would make retirement close to doable but it ain't gonna happen. There is a movement afoot to grab all the freebies you can and just play the system for all it's worth. Why keep fighting when giving up is so easy and so lucrative. Just relax and let the government take care of you like so many of our countrymen have done. The problem is I'm smart enough to see that letting the government take care of me means asking them to take money from others and give it to me. In the case of health care it's pretty much milking the young folks to subsidize the older. A tempting proposition if one isn't particularly concerned about the loss of individual freedoms and liberty in general. As it turns out, I am interested in these things and I refuse to hand the government more power than it already has by playing along with their power grabbing ways. Sure, I could let others pay for my insurance and use that "extra income" to buy nicer cars and bigger TV sets. A kind of personal bait and switch if you will. Get help with the insurance from other hard-working Americans, then shift the money that I would have had to spend on health care over to a miscellaneous fund to buy electronic gadgets and such. What a deal. Except for the ones paying for my insurance. But then they don't really have a choice since the Supreme Court decided the government can force you to play the game. This is a game I refuse to participate in. I can afford health insurance if I sacrifice certain other luxuries. And that will lighten the tax load on the younger generation which, it appears, will be drowning in their elders' debts as they try to build their futures. There are better ways to improve the health care situation than single payer socialized approaches. And for a moment let's pretend there aren't; still, our Constitution is too valuable to the survival of our free and prosperous nation to trample it underfoot for the sake of someone's idea of what's fair. If someone who is driving a beater and only has one 32" flat screen in their house, a house that is sufficient but not exorbitant, and who is not refusing to work when they are capable, needs some help with their insurance premiums then, by all means, society should have a mechanism to help them. But offering someone with sufficient means a subsidized plan for $33 dollars a month by way of taking money from other people is simply stupid and self-destructive. Self-destructive to a free nation, but empowering to the ruling class.
