When the "young and healthy" become the "old and infirm."

[Demo_Chris]

59. Yes. It is designed to siphon the last few bucks from the young and poor...

In order to feed it into the system to subsidize the old and affluent.

If young people could afford to take advantage of the insurance they are forced to buy there would be no net benefit to the system. By design they have to invest more than they take out. But in this case, we are tasking the poor to fund the comparatively wealthy. And worse, for them the normal insurance gamble does not even apply. They are statistically unlikely to need the insurance they are forced to buy, and if they do need it it offers no benefit because they cannot afford to take advantage of it. More, they don't have any assets for insurance to protect.

This has all been said before. My objection here is to the tone. Pilfer the young and poor if you must, but don't pretend this is all part of some grand social contract or a great deal for this generation we have completely screwed over even without this added burden. I think of it like this:

The transition to independence and adulthood is like crossing a river. When we were young we discovered a bridge had been built across that river by people who had come before us. We just waltzed on across. But we didn't bother to maintain that bridge, we ripped the deck up and sold it for scrap. And now a new generation, our kids or grandkids, have reached that bridge. They're trying to crawl across the unstable wreckage that remains, they want to start their lives and have families of their own. And we're waiting on the far side demanding that they pay us a toll.