If you’d join me I wanted to show you a brief in to my life, since I come from a very liberal family they qualify as poor or at least working class. This being said I’ve seen some government programs firsthand as a child clinging to them for relief. In fact, for most of my childhood I was on Medicaid and I can testify that this isn’t the heaven we portray it as to the poor. Now as someone with visual problems I had to get correction for it. This sounds simple enough but this is Medicaid we’re talking about, government equals very complicated.

When I needed correction Medicaid didn’t help me basically at all. Now don’t get me wrong it provided me with glasses however I wear contacts, which by the way are cheaper than an annual pair of glasses and Medicaid paid for biannual glasses. On top of that they didn’t pay for their “necessities”, since I wore contacts I went to an eye doctor who gave contact prescription exams but his contacts exam was also an eyeglasses prescription exam, which was part of a “twofer”. Now what does this last sentence mean? Simple, since it was technically a “contacts” exam, Medicaid wouldn’t cover it as a “glasses” exam, which is more like a “screwfer” since I had to pay out of pocket for the exam every time I went to get a checkup.

My dental experiences, however, were probably the worst since Medicaid paid for only the checkups as part of their “necessities”. Since nothing else counted as a “necessity” things of real need, like cavity prevention gel to aid me since, as a tea fan, cavities seemed to plague me, were given to my free by my dentist. Now we support these programs as coverage and care for the poor, but after these last two paragraphs I don’t see any coverage or care happening. All i see is appointments required, by Medicaid, being paid for and then being screwed over to have to pay for whatever the doctor or dentist gave prescription for. This leads to the question: Where did all the money go for the coverage, which leads to my medical experiences since Medicaid was pretty good at blowing money it probably shouldn’t have in the medical department.

Now I had mishaps like any other kid but for a majority of my years I had no medical malfunction, sometimes I even skipped the common cold a year. However Medicaid continued to throw money at things and for the last four to five years I was on the system it didn’t provide any “real” aid. The only thing I was using Medicaid for was to get the physical required to continue receiving Medicaid. Now I’m not a rocket scientist, but that seems like a giant waste of money, it’s interesting that a program praised so highly is only funding the activities required to keep getting Medicaid. That’s not coverage, in fact, that’s not even appearing to be coverage, that is just pointless.

Now here are some of the facts that the government doesn’t want you to see: Medicare was highly successful between the 1960s to 1990s, with the highest acceptance rate of any program. However, in the 1990s it experienced a huge reform that resulted in the slashing of people from the program and now it rejects more people annually than any other program. Since the slashing of the 90s, the number of uninsured has risen to higher than the 1950s, that’s pre-Medicare, so why the sudden change? Simple, like all government programs inevitably do, it went broke. Now not to add insult to injury, but not only are we with higher insured than pre-Medicare but free healthcare used to be the norm back in the 1950s, this is strange to people who don’t believe in things being free without a catch, but it existed because doctors took responsibility to get care to a fellow man, whether he was old or poor.

The success of a program can be measured in two ways: numbers, which are the harder one to get and the free market healthcare system actually has, and personal success, you know a program is failing when someone with no healthcare praises being off of Medicaid. This is exactly what I did, to the shocking reaction of my liberal family, I praised being off Medicaid even though I have no healthcare. Now, please throw aside bias and join me in saying we need to stop funding the personal wallets of our government and put the increasing tax dollars where they belong: the free market. Private charities are almost successful today as they were in the 1950s when Medicare didn’t exist and their performance can only get better with chucking Medicare because that will be more money that can go to them. I gave you a liberal glimpse, but now I have a Libertarian approach to a real problem and it’s up to you whether to pursue it, because only you have the power to end this financial enslavement.