If Medicare and Social Security are going bankrupt then why not?

[Jude the Obscure]

It's a red herring. Neither are going bankrupt. Social Security has plenty of money to support itself. If the Baby Boomers all live to 100 or 110, then Social Security will have to temporarily give smaller payouts, but then it would be fine again just after that. There is a single bump in the Social Security road, which is the huge Baby Boomer population, but the way Social Security is set up, even if nothing is done, it will continue to do what it does. (Keep elderly individuals from poverty)

As for Medicare, while average health insurance comparable to Medicare benefits costs between 8 and 18 thousand dollars a year on the private market, Medicare costs the tax payer 4 thousand. This is because Medicare can negotiate in a way an individual can't. Sort of like when you get married, and you get the group-discount and a free room for the honeymoon couple by all staying at the same hotel. Ideally, health insurance companies would be moral, and would keep costs low for all people, not just those with a collective negotiating power, like Medicare recipients, but in practice, our health insurance industrial complex is corrupt. They make money not by healing anyone, but by siphoning wealth off of the top of another human's misfortune.