How Success of Private Fire Departments Undermines Obamacare

Guinevere Nell / August 26, 2009

As the debate over the “public option” for health care heats up, a new attempt to ridicule those with concerns over government provision of services has taken hold: the group’s sarcastic Facebook tagline is “1 Million Strong Against our SOCIALIST Fire Departments,” and the argument is that public health care makes no less sense than public fire departments.

They are wrong on several fronts. First of all, as should be obvious to even the casual observer, the constitutional and economic issues are much more significant with an industry that constitutes one-sixth of our economy. Second, the idea that nobody questions the public provision of our fire services is flat-out wrong. Despite being a very small sliver of our economy, and having a long tradition that has always mixed private volunteer service with public funding, in fact many cities have contracted with private groups or completely privatized their systems. Those cities that have tried it report great success, for all the same reasons that privatization works in every other industry. (more…)