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

To: Road Walker who wrote (13737)	3/2/2010 12:12:52 PM
From: TimF	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

And there are things that would be terribly inefficient if attempted by the private sector because of their (rightful) self interest. Building an Interstate highway is an example. Interstate highways are built by contractors not government workers. As they are government contracts the process is less efficient than if it was a more purely private sector activity, but its still more efficient than having the government do it directly. Transportation services, water services, electricity, etc. have been profitably provided by the private sector. There isn't any good reason to think that government is generally more efficient at providing them. The main reason while most mass transit is paid for by the government (and much of it is run by the government), is 1 - Political, and 2 - A lot of the mass transit routes/types are not profitable even if done efficiently (but some have been, for example the New York City subway was initially built by the private sector, and was operated profitably until price controls got in the way of profits)