Medicaid is not at all comparable to Medicare.

First, Medicare pays a lot more to healthcare providers than Medicaid. Medicare pays more for more medications than Medicaid, and has fewer prior authorization requirements for those medicines. Fewer providers will accept Medicaid, and people using Medicaid will receive less or worse healthcare than those in Medicare.

Second, Medicaid is administered by each state, and there is a lot of variability on how easy the state makes it so people can actually get healthcare. Lots of states straight up refuse money simply to punish people of a certain socioeconomic class because it happens to win votes.

Bottom line, Medicaid is so leaders can claim they are helping poor people get healthcare AND keep taxes low. Medicare is for actually delivering healthcare to people because that contingent makes up a huge proportion of votes.

And yes, even Medicare is not delivering all healthcare, as it has multiple tiers to deliver differing amounts of healthcare to different socioeconomic classes.

The most obvious point: if they were equivalent programs, we would just include people under the poverty line with Medicare. Instead, we have a completely different program, managed by different people with different goals. Down to its very core, Medicaid is a political football.

Exactly, I guess my comment could have been much shorter.

I love how there is even an Additional Medicare Tax. The political lines in the US are very much old v young, but some of the young, especially politically active ones, vote with the old since they are among the wealthy young, and the rest do not participate enough, or do not have sufficient knowledge about how resources are being meted out and how they will be affected now and in the future.

Not in all states if you have no dependents.