My latest TCS essay says,

Many people began to agitate for universal, government-provided prostitution insurance, arguing that such systems were working in Canada and in many European countries. Such a single-payer system for prostitution would solve the growing problems of the uninsured and relieve the strains of employer-provided prostitution insurance. Most importantly, it would allow people to continue to be insulated from having to pay for sex.

Unfortunately, shifting the costs of prostitution insurance to taxpayers was fiscally impossible. Prosticare, the government’s popular insurance program for the elderly, was projected to run into deficits of tens of trillions of dollars in another 50 years. Forestalling such a bankruptcy was going to require drastic cuts in future benefits. Trying to expand Prosticare to cover everyone would have forced such cuts to take place today, and no politician wanted to risk a confrontation with senior citizens. So although politicians talked a lot about universal single-payer prostitution coverage, they never seriously proposed enacting it.

Where the essay was posted, one commenter complained that I was being demeaning–to the world’s oldest profession.