>>I paid tens of thousands of dollars into the system and I fear that, even though I am almost 60 years old, I will not receive any of the benefits that I paid for. If the system is broke, it's broke. It has no money left to pay me and there is nothing I can do about it.

The problem is that your Medicare "premiums" are already spent paying for the costs of those who came before you. The only way you can receive benefits now is for those who follow on, to pay for you in turn. But if you say they are SOL, then of course they will ask why they should be paying for you. It's a fair question and the only honest answer is that the elderly are a voting majority. Whether/why the young will be willing to spend their youth slaving for a gerontocracy that will be denied them, is another question.. but the fact is that Medicare has been a Ponzi scheme for years and the inevitable is drawing close now. If people want to apply blame, lets not forget that attempting to match input (taxation or private premiums) to predictable future costs incurs serious voter backlash whenever it is attempted.

In a sensible health insurance system, some of the surplus from early healthy years would be set aside to cover predictable future needs. Insurers do well with their investments: by the time an average worker reaches 65, good management would feasibly grow their contribution to a 7-figure sum to cover most needs and still leave a nice share for the insurer. Instead, crucial surpluses from those early years are sucked away immediately as dividends because insurers are allowed to dump predictable future costs onto the taxpayer. It's a great deal for the insurers' shareholders but a disaster for the customers who eventually are left in the lurch, same as any other Ponzi scheme.

The only possible comfort to be had is that many of the other first-world schemes aren't much better off: populations that resisted taxation are aging, converting their earlier desire to limit contribution to a new desire for the best available. Rationing of one form or another is the norm outside the US as well, even in the better European schemes that draw funds from multiple sources.