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Comment by erentz | Hacker News Reader

> The federal government was supposed to be small, because the founders understood the downside of a large federal government.

Those that want to return to this need to start advocating to abolish freedom of movement and permit states to implement residency requirements to access services. That way State A can go ahead an implement locally the "large federal government" services like Medicare or Social Security, while State Z can choose not to. At the moment our constitutional rights mean State Z residents can freeload by moving to State A. This kind of problem simply wasn't conceivable when the country was founded.

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That's why the homeless go to San Francisco or Maine. Better services.

The states are like incubators for different policies. The rest of us watch, and see what does work, and what doesn't work. For all I know, there are residency requirements for services in some places.

One of the things the Constitution protects is freedom of movement.

If a state wanted to implement something like Medicare for All, I think they could just do that.

If you don't like the laws in your state - change them.

If you live in California and you don't like the law in Alabama, what business of yours is that?

Supreme court determined a long time ago that a state cannot implement a residency requirement (e.g. 1 year minimum residency) before accessing that states benefits.

> If a state wanted to implement something like Medicare for All, I think they could just do that.

Yes. But for the problem explained. Also you can throw in issues such as states can't issue their own currencies or treasuries to finance things.

Really the USA is not set up for this kind of "confederation". We are a federation of states that have very limited powers and very stupidly drawn borders. If we want what it sounds like you're after then we need more a European Union style set up. Not separate states. But entirely separate countries. Basically we should decide if we're a country called the USA and are all American's first, or if we're all Kentuckians, Texans, Washingtonians, first and American's second.

This is sort of how it works in Canada; healthcare, disability, welfare and (some) pensions are all managed individually by each province. When you move, you have to jump through hoops to get access to those services in the new province. Still gets funded federally though and how money is transferred between provinces is huge point of contention.

Yeah, I think this is how it works for example in Australia too. You could conceive of this in the US just as easily, for example Medicaid (not Medicare) is a bit like that, run and jointly financed by the state and federal. But again that's "big government" to these states that want to reject healthcare.

What I would bet too is if you go and poll people on whether they like their "big government" program or what to get rid of it, most people would rather keep it, Medicare is big government I don't see seniors wanting rid of it. Social Security is big government. The military, I don't see anyone in these "small government" states saying they want rid of that.

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