Your Opinion: Rely on private sector, not gov’t

Nelson Otto

Jefferson City

Dear Editor:

I have to agree with most of Harold Horstmann’s letter of Oct. 11, but I think that his last paragraph concerning government services needed a little updating.

Many of the services listed, if not all of them, do not need to be provided by the government, they can be handled by the private sector and better than the government. There are roughly 2,200 privately owned highways, sometimes referred to as turnpikes or toll roads in the USA and Puerto Rico. Not only are they well maintained but they actually make a profit and you can make choices which ones you use. A recent article just reported that there are an increase in the number of private ambulance services popping up in the USA. Most of these services are ineligible for federal funding, so there will be a high level of competition between them which will inevitably lower costs. Over 80 percent of all fire services provided in the USA are done by volunteer fire departments that receive no government funding. They rely on fees and fund drives.

There was an article several years back showing that more and more apartment dwellers in New York were turning to private security. The reasoning, they voluntarily pay them, the security company is accountable to the clients or residents, and if company didn’t do their job to the liking of the clients they could fire them and hire another firm. Even the military can be handled privately. The government has actually been contracting with private firms. Firms that do the job much more efficiently than the government. Health care also doesn’t need to be run by the government, one of the most interesting innovations going on today is doctors are now providing unlimited general services for a monthly fee based on age. The fee varies from office to office and then you only buy insurance for catastrophic issues.

You can call them 24/7 for your health care needs and they work to find discounts on medicine. One of the doctors was asked about a cancer patient and how much their treatment cost. The patient only paid $6 a month for their chemo because without all the red tape they were able to get the drugs straight from the manufacturer saving the patient thousands of dollars. The government has its job but providing things is not it.