At this point people have paid all their lives into medicare and the VA is very different. Providing for the armed forces is the only part of health care where the federal government actually has constitutional power.
I agree with Captain Awesome that people need to be weened off of this, but it will be generational. It isn't as if someone no longer working can suddenly earn enough to handle this differently. I think Ron Paul's plan to cut the empire to finance social security and medicare for vested interests is really the only way to go. For everyone else, costs would actually DROP if we went the health savings account route, instead.
Tell me, poster, if Obama so loves the American people, how come he is sending hundreds of billions more of our money overseas as aid (not to mention as arms) but when it comes to saving medicare from bankruptcy the best he can come up with is cutting its funds and rationing the care our seniors get? Why isn't living up to actual DEBT to our seniors more important than giving more money to the IMF?