Why didn't the founders put Medicare and Social Security in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution?

[Noah H]

The short answer is simple and elegant....the Constitution is an 'affirmative document'. That is, what isn't forbidden by the Constitution, such as cruel and unusual punishment or ex post facto laws, is allowed, subject to the considerations of time, place and manner of exercise. What this means is that the Constitution doesn't 'grants rights', it protects and defends rights that would exist even without a constitution. For instance, the Constitution doesn't grant a citizen the right to wear pants, or a group of citizens the right to race horses or your granny the right to grow a backyard garden. What the Constitution does is set up a framework for passing laws that the 'people' may find to their benefit as long as those laws do not conflict with the Constitution. While it may be possible to make a case for not having such things as Social Security or Medicare enshrined in law, that argument can't be made on the back of their constitutionality as both S/S and Medicare have long since been declared well withing the limits of the Constitution. As far as the 'free market' is concerned, if the 'free market' could or would establish some form of private medicare and social security, they would have done it a long time ago. The reason that no private entity has done so rests on the fact that there's no profit incentive for the 'free market' to establish such an extensive social service. The private market does sell certain forms of protection, but all of those forms of protection assume a degree of risk. Should a 'customer' make the wrong decision or be scammed as many have been, the 'protection' they bought will be unavailable when needed. Should that happen the taxpayers would have to pick up the slack anyway....as they do with Medicaid and various forms of 'welfare'. Also at the time of the founding of the United States there was no such a thing as medical care as we now know it, and very few people lived past forty years...'retirement' was out of the question! 'Questions' like these tend to be repeats of the ramblings of the right wing radio dummies as they serve as purveyors of propaganda and disinformation for the current GOP/Teabag/Fox party. These people assume that the folks they want to convince of these reactionary ideas know nothing at all about history, 21st century economics and the details of the US Constitution......as evidenced by this 'question', boy.... are they ever right!