Astral Codex Ten

Medicare

3 min read

Medicare

Article

Medicare is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between May 04, 2021 and January 06, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “the government kept starting and expanding programs like Medicare”; “Medicare was never self-funding”. It most often appears alongside neoliberalism, Social Security, United States.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: May 04, 2021
  • Last seen: January 06, 2026

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Book Review: A Brief History Of Neoliberalism
May 04, 2021 · Original source
The post-WWII-but-pre-1970 economic world - the world of “embedded liberalism” - was a pleasant place. There were corporations, but they didn't do anything garish like compete with each other. Executive pay was taxed so heavily that nobody had much incentive to try to increase their profit margin; workforces were so heavily unionized that companies were nervous about any changes that might upset employees. As long as companies followed the script, the government embraced and protected them. Starting a new business was considered some bizarre act of alchemy, like discovering a new form of matter; normal people worked for the same giant company their whole life and got a nice gold watch as a reward when they retired. The government wasn't exactly socialist per se, but it kept starting and expanding programs like Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, and every night you went to sleep knowing there would be probably be another uncontroversial, mostly-successful government welfare program tomorrow.
Highlights From The Comments On Boomers
January 06, 2026 · Original source
Medicare was never self-funding.
As the number of retirees has grown and there are ever fewer number of workers to pay into the Ponzi-like scheme that is SS, people correctly fear that the Boomers will get all of theirs, but then the Ponzi-scheme will likely end (Medicare is actually in far worse shape than SS (which could still be saved by eliminating that increase by average wage growth provision - would address 80% of the problem).