I qualified my observations heavily and yes, it all sucks anyway.

All I'm observing is that from time to time, Democrats have identified key social needs that they have attempted to solve through $legislation$. Conservatives basically say everything is your own personal problem or a free market problem.

Social Security is a disaster. Most people earn less than what they would have gotten investing the money themselves. It's a pyramid scheme. It can't ever be ended, because the current retirees who would be cheated would vote against it.

You have no idea how shit my own track record has been in investing. I honestly believe the return I'm seeing is much more than the compounded total of what I put into FICA *had I invested it myself*.

I could see Social Security being truncated through some form of buyout, such as offering retirees a lump sum or an investment in a privately managed retirement pool. And sunsetting SS for very young current workers according to some sort of roll off formula.

Yeah, I'm familiar with vet care. Even that is hella expensive for specialized procedures. The level of due diligence would escalate for a human case and then you're back to unaffordability.