Democrats: Wake up! We don’t need Medicare. We need Health Care! Ah, the simplicity of branding and why Democrats are doomed.
No young person wants Medicare. They don’t even know what it is, but when they hear “Medicare for all,” it makes them think of old people…but young people are young. For the young, “Medicare” is for old people…and old people smell funny and they live in depressing, old people homes that serve disgusting, old people food. Middle aged people aren’t attracted to the words “Medicare for All” either, because we also think of Medicare as related to the elderly. We are, however, old enough to think of health care as a good thing. Plus our knees are starting to ache. Of course, old people are comfortable with the word Medicare, because they are accustomed to Medicare itself. They might not be paying that much attention to my imaginary rebranding because they are busy with Bingo or watching “Wheel of Fortune.” Or if they do rebrand Medicare, for old people you could probably continue to use the term Medicare, too, because a lot of old people don’t like change.
A lot of old people don’t like change.
Jack had an 80+ year old Aunt once, and she was, well, old. She didn’t live in one of those old people prisons, but she did make us dinner when we came to visit. It was so sweet of her. Perhaps in her prime she was a good cook, but if she had those skills in the past, they had faded along with her skin and her good looks. Aunt Rose never lost her charm, though. Old people get charminger as they age, I think. Quaint expressions are charming. Wisdom is charming. Therefore, old people are charming, too, or at least they can be. They can also be crotchety and mean, but that’s not their fault. They’re old.
She didn’t live in one of those old people prisons.
Back to the hospitality of dear Aunt Rose. She lived in an apartment in Pittsburgh. So tickled was she that we had flown all the way across the country to visit that she insisted on making us dinner in her little old people apartment. Excuse me, little old person apartment, because she lived alone, even though she was well into her 80s by then, as previously mentioned. Back to the cooking story…Aunt Rose made us dinner, Italian style, because she was Italian. You know what they say about Italian hospitality.
Unfortunately, instead of lasagna or some other kind of delicious Italian dish, Aunt Rose made us a frittata. It was disgusting. I don’t know what else the frittata had in it (I’ve tried to block out that particular memory), but I do remember the most horrifying of ingredients: celery. Just to refresh your memory, I like celery. In a tuna fish salad, celery is a must. However, in a dinner frittata, it is an absolute no. No. No! Please, dear Feisty readers, never make a frittata with celery. Save your celery for the tuna fish salad; the tuna will thank you.
This is not Aunt Rose. 
This is a celery pic. (Dreamstime)
I have, as is beautifully typical of my writing style, detoured away from my original point: Medicare. People don’t want “Medicare for all.” Old people are perfectly fine with “Medicare for all” because they are already on Medicare, of course. They are already 65 plus. Personally, I don’t think of 65 as old, but that’s because my own mother-in-law lived to the glorious, ancient old age of 97. Now, THAT is old. Anyway, whether 65 is “old” or not, I don’t care, because I would like every person to get care for their health, which was my premise to begin with. Celery had nothing to do with it.
In my humble opinion, everyone should get Medicare, because anyone who is sick, should be able to have health care. Simple. Medicare=health care. I think it would work out, too, financially speaking. Young people, who typically don’t get sick that often (or ever) would have put their meager tax money into the system with their meagerly paid jobs at Taco Bell or McDonalds. Since the young don’t need medical help that often, it would be a wash. Homeless people cost taxpayers thousands upon thousands of dollars because they don’t have medical insurance at all, which means they end up in hospital emergency rooms, so tax payers pay for that anyway. Then, middle-agers, whether they work at Wall Street or made McDonald’s an entire career (albeit a sad one), would also put money into the health care system to pay for the newly named health system. Everyone could get care, through my re-branded “Health Care,” called, not Medicare, thank you, but just called “Health Care,” which is pretty straight forward. Or, you can call it whatever you want, just don’t call it Medicare. If you prefer to name my imaginary health care program while you read this, feel free to call it something else like, “Even-if you-break-your-leg-snowboarding Care.” However, my new name, just plain old “Health Care,” is a little more tempting for people who are on the older side, but not necessarily the ones on still-named Medicare. You know, the folks who don’t snowboard but put celery in a frittata.
