Beyond Deservingness
There’s a peculiar contradiction at the heart of modern public policy: Propose universal provision—unconditional meals, healthcare, housing, or cash—and you’re told it’s utopian, “unrealistic,” unaffordable. Yet the very same systems that balk at universality are perfectly willing to spend billions each year on eligibility audits, means-testing software, and bureaucratic hurdles designed to keep resources scarce. The logic animating these choices is not a rational allocation of limited means, but a deep-rooted fear: that someone, somewhere, might get help they didn’t “deserve.”
The result is an economy of gatekeeping so elaborate that its price is measured not just in dollars, but in lives upended and trust eroded. Social Security, which nearly everyone receives, runs on less than half a percent overhead. But SNAP, the country’s primary food assistance program, squanders over five percent of its budget on administrative policing—more than six billion dollars a year, just to decide who’s worthy. Internationally, you see the same pattern: Taiwan’s single-payer health system, with universal coverage and minimal red tape, spends a fraction on administration compared to the U.S., where the patchwork of private insurers and fragmented rules devours nearly one in five healthcare dollars before a single patient is treated. These are not abstract figures; they’re signals of priorities.
“The loudest defense of means-testing is always the supposed prevention of “waste” and “free riders.” But…the only “free riders” reliably profiting are consultants, software vendors, and denial middlemen.”
For every dollar spent on bureaucratic sorting, another dollar is lost to the actual people these programs are supposed to serve. Across the country, complexity means that working families are routinely tripped up by paperwork, missed deadlines, or the randomness of recertification cycles. Benefits lapse for reasons entirely disconnected from need. Medication goes unfilled, support vanishes, and a preventable emergency can wipe out months of progress. This is not a bug, but the intended consequence of a structure that treats ambiguity as a threat rather than a call to serve. These dynamics—and their human toll—are explored further in Edge-Case Medicine: How Profit Logic Treats Life as Waste.
Universal systems don’t solve these problems through perfection, but through refusal: they reject the premise that people should have to clear arbitrary hurdles to receive help. If everyone is enrolled by default, no one can lose their lifeline over a missed envelope, a misplaced document, or a bureaucratic misunderstanding. The logic isn’t just more humane—it’s more robust.
And this isn’t speculation. Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend sends every state resident a yearly check, requiring only proof of residency and maintaining administrative costs at two percent. California and Minnesota’s universal school meal programs have erased forms and stigma, with participation in breakfast alone jumping forty percent in Minnesota. The strength of these programs is their simplicity: no risk algorithms, no armies of caseworkers, just a clear rule applied to all.
So why do we persist in building and defending such costly, fragile, and exclusionary systems? Because scarcity is profitable. Means-testing and eligibility policing aren’t policy accidents—they’re lucrative markets.
Software vendors land multi-year contracts to root out “fraud.”
Private equity firms profit directly from access failures in emergency rooms, jails, and shelters.
Credit bureaus and data brokers sell ever more granular risk scores to justify denials.
Consultants and auditors sell “equity reviews” as subscription services, rarely shifting underlying power.
The exclusionary logic we see today is simply the modern update of patterns stretching from 1493 papal decrees to redlining, convict leasing, and risk-based insurance.
These costs are not evenly distributed. People with disabilities and chronic illness lose benefits at double the rate of others. Black, Indigenous, and racialized families are more likely to be churned out of the system by paperwork and algorithmic red flags. Survivors, immigrants, and people experiencing homelessness live under the constant threat that a technicality will erase their only safety net. What we call “targeting” in practice is the rationing of compassion, always at the expense of those least able to self-advocate.
Any call for universality, of course, meets the same tired objections. We hear about NHS wait times, Canadian queues, the dreaded “free rider” problem. These are real challenges, but they are not the damning critique opponents imagine. Even systems under strain, like Taiwan’s or Alberta’s, consistently achieve lower costs, fewer bankruptcies, and higher public trust than any fragmented alternative. When universality is watered down—through deductibles, co-pays, or hybrid insurance models—inequality and exclusion quickly resurface. The lesson is clear: universal models are resilient when simple, and vulnerable only when compromised by complexity or carve-outs.
The loudest defense of means-testing is always the supposed prevention of “waste” and “free riders.” But universal risk pooling actually reduces costs and produces surpluses—as seen in Alaska and Taiwan—while fraud policing in means-tested programs burns up more in paperwork and audits than it ever recovers. The only “free riders” reliably profiting are consultants, software vendors, and denial middlemen. Scarcity-driven models, in fact, drive up emergency costs—ER visits and shelters are ten times more expensive than basic income support. Oversight is easier, not harder, when everyone’s in the same pool.
What would it look like to move toward universality? We don’t need a magic switch—just a change in priorities. Start with automatic enrollment: expand child tax credits, use school lists for free meals, connect birth records to healthcare. Let bold states or cities pilot single-payer or universal basic services. As administrative savings and payout ratios become too stark to ignore, national politics will follow. The guardrails are straightforward: eligibility based only on residency and age; open, real-time budgets; oversight boards with true veto power and rotating seats for impacted communities.
Let’s also be honest: this shift threatens an entire industry built on exclusion. Eligibility vendors, risk brokers, bureaucratic gatekeepers—some jobs and contracts will vanish. That’s not a bug; it’s a feature of redirecting resources to where they matter. As with Social Security, Medicare, or public schools, the opposition will be fierce. But this time, we have global precedents and real evidence.
If you want to move the needle, you don’t need to wait for national reform.
Policymakers can propose auto-enrollment and publish administrative ratios.
Public agencies can track and publicize the share of their budgets reaching people.
Technologists can refuse to build new eligibility hurdles and instead create tools for one-click signups.
Unions can demand universal benefits as wage insurance.
Donors and voters can support pilot programs and insist on transparent overhead reporting.
In the end, this is not a debate about idealism. We already have the resources. Each new layer of means-testing is a hidden tax, funding only delay, denial, and the profits of those who keep help out of reach.
The question is not how we’ll pay for universality—it’s how much we’re already paying, every day, just to keep people waiting.