Health Care and Burning Houses

it is becoming common for left-leaning columnists to dismiss complaints about the public option for health care by comparing it to the fire department. Nicholas Kristof is the most recent to make this comparison. According to this argument, we are happy allowing the government to run the fire department so why not let it run health care? There are four major problems with this apples to oranges logic.

1) You can use this to justify a government takeover of everything. If you trust the government to put out fires, why not trust it to run your supermarkets/banks/TV stations? Reasonable people agree that there has to be some limit to government intrusion into people's lives. Otherwise you end up with Communist Russia which was a failure.

2) Buildings are at fixed locations, people move. Having a single location that will handle fires for a given area makes economic sense. On the other hand, people move all the time and their location has no relation to their insurance carrier. There are other major differences. Fires constitute an emergency. Insurance coverage may involve medical emergencies, but it is paid long after the fact. Geography makes it difficult for rival fire companies to compete but this does not apply to insurance companies.

3) There is no good reason why fire departments are government-run. The historic reason is that steam-powered pumps and horses were expensive. These days, fire departments could easily be outsourced if they weren't heavily unionized. Look at UPS and other delivery services which are slowly killing the US Postal Service.

4) I've been saving the best for last - fire departments are run by local government but the public option will be run by the federal government. There's a big difference in accountability between the two. What do you think the reaction would be if the Obama administration proposed a federal takeover of fire departments? The original question treats all levels of government as a single unit. If you correct for that then the question is: "You don't object to allowing your local government run your fire department so why not let the federal government run health care?" Not half as persuasive when you put it that way, is it?