NYT's Nick Kristof argues that "government" can run the healthcare system better than the private sector.

Kristof writes:

Throughout the industrialized world, there are a handful of these areas where governments fill needs better than free markets: fire protection, police work, education, postal service, libraries, health care. The United States goes along with this international trend in every area but one: health care.

So Kristof says. But he has to go all the way back to the 1800s to paint squabbling volunteer fire companies as ineffective in a place as big as NYC. Whatever the advantages of a "government-run" fire company, no one that I know of has suggested a U.S. Department of Fire Fighting for the entire nation. Cities have their own fire departments, not nations.

As for police work, maybe there are too many local departments but few people are arguing to federalize all policing.

Education? Quick question. If Kristof lives in New York City does he send his own kids to government-run schools? Because an alarming number of public school teachers don't.

Recently HBO's Bill Maher wrote a sophomoric piece for the Huffington Post about how stupid Americans are. He didn't blame the nation's "public" schools for failing to educate millions of students. Mostly he seemed to blaming stupid and mean Republicans. Maybe we need to federalize the thousands of school systems across the country. You think that smarten everybody up, Bill? Nick?

The postal service remains a national joke, unable to compete against more efficent private carriers, thanks to federal union work rules and the like. And libraries get funding from cities and states but are run locally.

Kristof cites Veterans Administration hospitals are being well run, though we recall a scandal from just a few years back at Walter Reed Army hospital where wounded soldiers were not getting the care they needed and deserved.

Comedy Central's Jon Stewart thinks everybody in this country deserves the same care as our veterans and he made serious fun of conservative Bill Kristol when he disagreed on the Daily Show. But, as Kristol said veterans have, after all, served their country and many put themselves in harm's way to defend her and us. Maybe they do deserve a little something more than the rest of us, non-servers.

Kristof writes:

On my blog, foreigners regularly express bewilderment that America may reject reform and stick with a system that drives families into bankruptcy when they get sick. That’s what they expect from the Central African Republic, not the United States.

Really? That's a problem in the Central African Republic, citizens are being driven into bankruptcy by health care costs? No, not really.

In fact, the citizens of the CAR, would probably LOVE to be bankrupted by health care costs because it would mean they had SOMETHING in the way of property and money in the first place.

From Wikipedia (I know, I know but it was the first site that came up and I've got a column to write today):

The country is self-sufficient in food crops, but much of the population lives at a subsistence level. Livestock development is hindered by the presence of the tsetse fly.

In 2006 due to ongoing violence, over 50,000 in the country's north-west were at risk of starvation,[6] and this was only averted thanks to United Nations support.

Bill Maher should be making fun of Kristof's foreign readers.