“Distribute a benefit and you distribute dependency. Distribute dependency and you distribute political power to whoever controls the distribution.”
47% of the American population is receiving government funded healthcare……
CMS reports +85% of Marketplace 22,000,000 enrollees receive government subsidies. That’s about 18,000,000 Americans. Add to that Medicaid and CHIP enrollment of 74,000,000. Then add another 70,000,000 Medicare participants. That’s a total of 162,000,000 Americans on government subsidized health insurance.
Since history has a habit of repeating itself it’s not hard to imagine the end game here. Government health care welfare is not going away because too many vested interests benefit. It’s only going to grow. So what can we expect to happen? The following article provides a clue…………..
The following article is by Handre on X:
Rome handed out free grain to 40,000 citizens in 73 BC. By 46 BC, Julius Caesar found 320,000 people lining up for their monthly ration. That eight-fold expansion happened in under three decades, and it shows you how welfare states actually grow.
No Roman senator stood up and announced a plan to addict a third of the city to government bread. It happened incrementally, through political competition. Each magistrate who wanted votes expanded eligibility. Each expansion normalized the next one. The citizen who once considered the dole shameful eventually expected it, then demanded it, then organized politically to protect it.
This is the core mechanism free market thinkers have identified across every era: once you create a transfer program, you create a constituency for that program. Recipients vote. Administrators build careers. Grain merchants who supply the state develop a stake in keeping the contracts flowing. The political economy locks in.
Caesar, to his credit, actually cut the rolls back to 150,000 through verification audits. It was one of his more economically coherent moves, though the Senate still murdered him. His successors quietly let the numbers climb again.
What did the dole require? Massive grain imports from Sicily, Sardinia, and Egypt, organized through state logistics at state expense, funded by taxation and conquest. When the conquest revenue dried up, the obligation remained. Rome had written a check against future military success, and future military success eventually failed to arrive.
The lesson is not complicated. Distribute a benefit and you distribute dependency. Distribute dependency and you distribute political power to whoever controls the distribution. The grain dole didn’t weaken Rome overnight, but it made every subsequent reform politically impossible.
HOMEWORK READING ASSIGNMENT: Medicare For All Is Only One Election Away