The Left would love to have everyone think that the elderly in this nation are helpless victims who can only survive as wards of the state. Quick...what image first snaps into your head when the word "elderly" is said? Bet five bucks it isn't some spry old guy swinging a golf club in Palm Springs. This is not accidental.

A lot of my old relatives, and one young one, also died of things a long time ago that they can cure now. Not sure what this has to do with socialized medicine.

Lyndon Johnson couldn't have known the costs of the program he championed, because his world was predicated on most people dying before they reached 75. To call him a liar because he couldn't see the future isn't fair.

If you actually do the research on this (PLEASE read "Medicare's Midlife Crisis" by Sue Blevins ), many people warned of the cost problems back then. Also, experience should count for something. There has never been an entitlement program that has not exploded far beyond original cost estimates.

What bothers me the most right now is that the Left not only refuses to try and fix the problem, they want to add more load.

In the early '60s, the proper solution was being enacted by the states...a program to help the elderly poor with medical care using state programs and some Federal funding. It was means tested. Apparently, unfortunately for the politicians, there weren't enough elderly poor to make this a key to political power, and the push for universal care went on.

If the objective was actually to provide medical care to those who couldn't afford it, a means-tested program would have done the job. If the objective was to virtually enslave the most reliable voting group in America, you need a universal program.

Even now, practically once a year, the socialists in Congress propose single-payer health care*. The pressure is constant. With the medical care of American citizens under state control, there is no aspect of your life that they cannot legitimately claim to control. What you eat. What you drive. How you work. Can you think of anything you do in your life that cannot somehow be related to your medical needs? And of course, this also gives the politicians their favorite campaign technique: holding a lit match next to some desperately needed entitlement while some elderly person grabs their knees and begs to be allowed to vote for them.

Until Americans are broken of the entitlement mentality, I don't see any way to fix this.

*Link at: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:h.r.00676: