I'm a younger (34) person with substantial healthcare needs (I have MS). Everything is always oriented towards the old, and I also pay taxes that are used to support them while getting nothing in return despite having similar needs.
Do you really get nothing? And who is paying for whose care? You mention taxes, but they've probably been paying taxes even longer. And why do you think health care is a strict quid pro quo anyway? Some of us believe care should be allocated where it's needed, not where it's paid for. Put another way: why is it a problem that they are getting care? Isn't it that you aren't? This doesn't have to be a zero-sum game. If you feel that you're in competition with someone else for care, the problem is pretty clearly that there aren't enough providing it.
Saying others have less right to health care is pretty terrible no matter which way the finger points.
That said, we do care for the elderly because of their vulnerability but we then shit on younger disabled people. Old people can have assets, most younger disabled people can't, and younger disabled people can lose their benefits by getting married. SSA also applies different criteria for disability and makes it functionally impossible to get if you're young enough versus in your 50s or 60s.
I'm frustrated at being expected to extend infinite grace to the elderly when receiving very little/none, despite us being similarly vulnerable. I also dislike that in general our culture takes care of the elderly/gives them their dues without asking them to take up the corresponding responsibility. As a group, they care very little about the future.
After years fighting/voting for better healthcare, very little has been accomplished. So am I just supposed to suffer and accept I matter less than an old person? That's kind of against basic animal survival instinct. My country seems determined to view it as a quid pro quo, including the elderly.
From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs is the only solution for healthcare.
Right now the answer seems to be 'take as much from the young as you can and guarantee them nothing' and that's not sustainable. It's just that most of the young can avoid looking at this reality until they have a health problem.
Absolutely not. The situation is deplorable, and I hope we can get to a better one some day. Fight for all you're worth. All I'm saying is that others who receive care are not your enemies. (Or at least not because they receive care. There's bound to be some overlap.) The enemy is the people within the system who restrict the labor supply, drive up prices for everything else, make arbitrary rules like those you've mentioned, and so on. The politicians and profiteers, not the patients, define that system.
I will never have access to my enemy until there's a critical mass of upset people, and the elderly seem willing to let younger people die of treatable problems as long as they're not effected, so the only way to get them to care and join us seems to be to make them feel as insecure as the rest of us, which sucks.
I believe the elderly have agency and for the ones who are still alive (since of course the people who live to 85+ to begin with are those who didn't have to ruin their health due to poverty and blue collar labor), they've used their agency to say 'we don't care about you'. Which is fine, but then they turn around and get all mad when they're not cared about in return. Either they want to be a part of a community, including accepting the responsibilities, or they don't. They need to stop wanting to have their cake and eat it too.