Since in the United States we will always have a welfare system, it might as well be one that is generous and efficient apropos of nursing homes.  Medicaid makes it hard for lower middle-class families, unable to afford nursing home costs, to receive assistance, and continually pays the nursing homes insufficiently—when, that is, it doesn’t overpay them, and this too has been a problem.

Why not discontinue Medicaid’s health funding for the poor and simply help them through cash payments (a universal basic income)?  Why not have Medicaid, if we even want it to exist, provide nursing home vouchers to citizens making less than . . . what?  $80,000 a year?  Sounds good to me.  In fact, the vouchers could be not specifically for nursing home costs but for a life insurance policy since the money from such a policy can be used for long-term medical care.

We need to be wise with our money or medical welfarism, in itself, will shrink drastically.  Yes, I desire smaller government, but even more do I desire less wayward and more compassionate government.