>The federal government does not produce wealth: it has no source of wealth other than confiscation of citizens' wealth through taxation. As far as I am concerned, taxation should only go towards those functions representing what government SHOULD do, and that's protection of its citizens' rights. And health care is NOT a right.

The use of the word "wealth" in this context is imprecise and leads to an incorrect conclusion. A better approach is to ask if the federal government "adds value". I like to think that many, if not most, government workers are conscientiously engaged in worthwhile work i.e. their work is "valuable". If the value of their work exceeds the taxes confiscated, then a net addition of value is possible.

The difficulty is that the civil service has practically no incentive to create net value. In some cases they are directed by elected officials, who are nominally accountable in that they may try to avoid being thrown out on their ear in the next election. But a politician getting re-elected is almost always about pleasing voters - buying them with their own money - rather than concentrating on improving the value-creation (or minimizing the loss) of government activities.

In a perfect world, government would be mutualistic, but in practice it tends to be parasitic.

The idea of limiting governments' activities to protecting citizens' rights is laudable, but in practice it's prudent for government to intervene in some cases. One example is to prevent the formation of monopolies, or offset the effects if they form by acting as, or threatening to act as, a competitor. An example of this is large infrastructure projects such as bridges and highways.

The flip side is that governments sometimes lose sight of the fact that they themselves can act as monopolies. These can be especially ugly - enforced via legislation - so they are de jure, rather than merely de facto.

Whether it's prudent for government to get involved in health care is highly debatable <g> There are some monopolistic tendencies e.g.

- large health care facilities such as hospitals are so expensive to build and maintain that only large corporations, or government, can afford to run them

- legislation and regulations mandate that only certain people are licensed to provide health care services

- wide scale initiatives such as vaccinations and development of certain drugs/treatments is so expensive that again only large corporations or government can contemplate it

And, monopolism is only one facet of the health care debate.