State-run health insurance is essentially a Ponzi Scheme: the first ones in are the winners; the last ones in are the losers.

The handwriting is already on the wall in California for the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP), which is the transitional program designed to carry us forward to January 2014, when health insurnce will be available to all, regardless of the risk to the insurer (which will ultimately be the US Taxpayer.)

According to recent reports of what is actually happening with the PCIP in California:

"California was expecting to have about 23,000 residents in its PCIP program by February 2011, and it was expecting those enrollees’ claim costs to average about $1,100 per member per month. As of the end of October 2011, the program had received about 8,500 applications and enrolled about 6,000 people. The program ended the month with 5,300 enrollees, up from 513 enrollees a year earlier. The enrollees have been averaging claim costs of $3,100 per member per month, officials say. The high cost means that, unless more funding surfaces, the program can afford to serve only about 6,800 enrollees at a time, not 23,000, officials say."

So it has come down to this: unless more funding "surfaces," or . . .

"He remembered theoretical conversations he had often had with the doctor on the subject of euthanasia: arguments with the doctor who was quite unmoved by the story of the Nazi elimination of old people and incurables. The doctor had once said, 'It's what any State medical service has sooner or later got to face. If you are going to be kept alive in institutions run by and paid for by the State, you must accept the State's right to economize when necessary.'" --Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear (1943), p. 176.