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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (2635)	11/1/2007 2:29:55 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 42652

Problems in government are often problems with the incentives built in to the system, not just the problems with the current office holders. Politicians have a lot of perverse incentives. I recommend you look in to Public Choice economics. And even if the problem is the current officeholders, well the current bunch isn't unique for all time. Your going to have people in office that will make decisions you think are wrong and/or manage things poorly. That has to be taken as a given. Governments are run by people, and people are imperfect.

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (2635)	11/2/2007 5:37:31 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 42652

"Most private charity (not all) is about the self absorbed donor." I am extremely grateful that I can state that your perception is quite reversed. Some charity is about a self absorbed donor, but most is about a common vision for providing something that the market does not do efficiently. Are you telling me that most of the people serving at the soup kitchen are there for appearances? The doctors who serve in foreign countries are there for glory? Etc.? "There is a lot of private charity in the muslim world and in South America." There used to be much more in America, but government has subsumed the role. Charitable people tend to be sensitive to duplication of efforts. "Charity is one thing, but the concept of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people is something else." Great, but nowhere in the Constitution does it say I have to pay for cancer treatment on the guy downtown who chooses not to work. Any government that would inflict that on its citizens has become tyrannical. "There are some things government can do better." And all three of those roles that the Federal government can do better are written into the Constitution.