Can you name one government agency that runs truly efficiently?

Question

Have you ever seen or been to a VA hospital? What makes someone even think that a national healthcare system run by the government can be effective?

Do you have any idea at all how much you will be losing out of your paycheck?(for those who work for a living)

Answer 1

The IRS. No one does as good a job as the goverment when it comes to taking your money. It's their primary incentive. Everything else they do is second rate, of course.

Answer 2

You have a misconception about universal health coverage. It's directed at the insurance industry, not the medical industry. Universal health coverage will not turn doctors into government employees. The federal government will not be administering hospitals.
Universal coverage is the same plan as Medicare. It would have a user fee, in other words you would have to pay for the coverage. What it would do is create a large group for those people who do not get medical coverage from their employer. There would be little change in medical coverage for the destitute. The destitute already get medical care paid for by taxpayers money.
I don't understand the resistence over creating a large group for individuals to secure health coverage on their own at a reasonable cost. Particularly when a user fee is included. It would cost the taxpayers nothing.
Perhaps you could explain that to me?

Answer 3

Our current health care system is very inefficient. Tens of millions have no health insurance coverage. The emergency room system is used by many often for preventable illnesses and is very expensive. A very high percentage of health care costs go to administrative costs for dealing with the various health insurance carriers and their differing coverage. Americans are less healthy and don’t live as long as people in industrialized countries that have universal health care.

In this situation, government operation of health care would be an improvement in efficiency.

Answer 4

1. The United States Postal Service

2. The Department of Transportation.

Answer 5

social security is supposedly pretty good at getting the checks out on time, but they're broke cause the politicians keep raiding its coffers like a piggy bank. Most federal law enforcement is efficient, to add to the other guy. I agree with your sentiment and no the government should not be taking on more projects that it can't afford or administer properly.

Answer 6

The well-known inefficiencies of government operation are not empirical accidents, resulting perhaps from the lack of a civil-service tradition. They are inherent in all government enterprise, and the excessive demand fomented by free and other underpriced services is just one of the many reasons for this condition.

Thus, free supply not only subsidizes the users at the expense of nonusing taxpayers; it also misallocates resources by failing to supply the service where it is most needed. The same is true, to a lesser extent, wherever the price is under the free-market price. On the free market, consumers can dictate the pricing and thereby assure the best allocation of productive resources to supply their wants. In a government enterprise, this cannot be done. Let us take again the case of the free service. Since there is no pricing, and therefore no exclusion of submarginal uses, there is no way that government, even if it wanted to, could allocate its services to the most important uses and to the most eager buyers. All buyers, all uses, are artificially kept on the same plane. As a result, the most important uses will be slighted, and the government is faced with insuperable allocation problems, which it cannot solve even to its own satisfaction. Thus, the government will be confronted with the problem: Should we build a road in place A or place B? There is no rational way by which it can make this decision. It cannot aid the private consumers of the road in the best way. It can decide only according to the whim of the ruling government official, i.e., only if the government official, not the public, does the "consuming." If the government wishes to do what is best for the public, it is faced with an impossible task.

Government can either deliberately subsidize by giving a service away free, or it may genuinely try to find the true market price, i.e., to "operate on a business basis." This is often the cry raised by conservatives—that government enterprise be placed on a "business footing," that deficits be ended, etc. Almost always this means raising the price. Is this a solution, however? It is often stated that a single government enterprise, operating within the sphere of a private market, buying from it, etc., can price its services and allocate its resources efficiently. This, however, is incorrect. There is a fatal flaw that permeates every conceivable scheme of government enterprise and ineluctably prevents it from rational pricing and efficient allocation of resources. Because of this flaw, government enterprise can never be operated on a "business" basis, no matter what the government's intentions.

What is this fatal flaw? It is the fact that government can obtain virtually unlimited resources by means of its coercive tax power. Private businesses must obtain their funds from investors. It is this allocation of funds by investors on the basis of time preference and foresight that rations funds and resources to the most profitable and therefore the most serviceable uses. Private firms can get funds only from consumers and investors; they can get funds, in other words, only from people who value and buy their services and from investors who are willing to risk investment of their saved funds in anticipation of profit. In short, payment and service are, once again, indissolubly linked on the market. Government, on the other hand, can get as much money as it likes. The free market provides a "mechanism" for allocating funds for future and present consumption, for directing resources to their most value-productive uses for all the people. It thereby provides a means for businessmen to allocate resources and to price services to insure such optimum use. Government, however, has no checkrein on itself, i.e., no requirement for meeting a profit-and-loss test of valued service to consumers, to enable it to obtain funds. Private enterprise can get funds only from satisfied, valuing customers and from investors guided by profits and losses. Government can get funds literally at its own whim.

Answer 7

yep. All the departments that run everyday services that are so smooth you don't even really notice them - like water, sewerage and garbage collection.

Answer 8

Homeland security. Now that they have decided to hire undocumented workers from Mexico, I'm sure things will get even better.

Answer 9

you're still confused about universal healthcare aren't you? your comparison makes no sense.

Answer 10

The FBI is very efficient.