There's an enormous difference in motivations between law enforcement and health care. Last I checked police officers didn't have to take out $100k/year in insurance to protect against liability.

Also, last I checked we don't have a tragedy-of-the-commons problem with law enforcement. The police office covering your neighbor is also covering you. The same can not be said for the MRI you need for your knee.

You might want to ask the private guard killed at the Smithsonian's Holocaust museum what he things of your stupid strawman.

There's an enormous difference in motivations between law enforcement and health care.

Ideally, both doctors and cops do their jobs because they want to help people. How much people working at either job tend to live up to this ideal is open to debate, of course, but I don't really see how they differ that much.

Last I checked police officers didn't have to take out $100k/year in insurance to protect against liability.

Um ... yeah, because they're government employees. In fact, both individual police officers and police departments get sued all the time. The only reason individual officers don't have to carry liability insurance policies is because their departments and/or unions (usually) cover it for them. Ditto for physicians working for the military, the VA, the PHS, and other "socialized" medical services.

Also, last I checked we don't have a tragedy-of-the-commons problem with law enforcement. The police office covering your neighbor is also covering you. The same can not be said for the MRI you need for your knee.

Huh? Do you really think one cop is an infinite resource? If an officer is responding to a 911 call, he can't simultaneously respond to another call, any more than two patients can go through the same MRI machine at the same time. When you use the word "covering," you seem to be talking about potential rather than actual response -- in which case the radiology department at your local hospital is indeed "covering" you and all your neighbors at once.

Right.... motivations is to help people... Waitresses are out to help people as well. As are plumbers, hookers, pavers, roofers, drug dealers, etc. Based on your reasoning we can not ignore ALL of the other issues that make each of these professions distinct because they're all out to "help people".

And while you gloss over the tragedy of the commons problem, it is very real. Your MRI is your MRI. It's not going to help your neighbor with his knee. Also, your MRI was done on a machine that cost around $3,000,000.

That would buy one sweeeeeeeet cop car!

http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/8894/kaneklapqo6.gif

Why? People would be assaulting themselves just to take advantage of the free policing!

Also, last I checked we don't have a tragedy-of-the-commons problem with law enforcement. The police office covering your neighbor is also covering you. The same can not be said for the MRI you need for your knee.

Exactly. It's my MRI machine, techician to run it, and radiologist to interpret it. If you need an MRI, get your own.

You're still not making any sense. "Your MRI" is an event involving a machine and the radiology personnel who run it, not the machine itself; just as "your 911 call" is an event involving a police officer and a vehicle (or more than one of each, depending on the severity of the situation) not the car in which the cop responds. In both cases, the people and equipment are not available for other people while they're being used for your benefit, but they are available afterwards. There is no "tragedy of the commons" in either case; neither MRI machines and radiology staff, nor police cars and police officers, are generally "used up" by a single event.

The comparison of costs is a red herring, since a single MRI machine can cover a far larger population than a single police car.

As for motivations -- no, most waitresses, plumbers, hookers, pavers, roofers, and drug dealers do what they do solely for money. And if that's all you're after, then pretty much all of the jobs listed are an easier way to make a living than being a doctor or a cop. I'm not saying, of course, that all (or even most) people who choose medicine or law enforcement as a career are motivated entirely by altruism, but having worked in one and worked closely with the other, I can say that there is definitely something in both these professions which is very different from most jobs; those who follow either path have far more in common with each other than they do with workers whose sole motivation is a paycheck.

You obviously don't grasp what the "tragedy of the commons" is really about. It applies when overuse of a common resource benefits the individual abuser at the expense of the community. Take a common fishing ground which everyone can use. If everyone acts in the long-term interests of the group of fishermen as a whole and limits their seasonal catch, the fishing ground can be sustained indefinitely. But it is in every fisherman's individual interest to catch as many fish as possible. If all fishermen act in this self-interested way the fishery is destroyed.

It's hard to see how overusing medical or police resources would be beneficial to the abuser. It is as icemilkcoffee sarcastically put it: "People would be assaulting themselves just to take advantage of the free policing!" No one will go get an extra root-canal because it's free. But it's good that one is available when you really need it! So the "tragedy of the commons" doesn't apply here. People who need medical care will get what they need, but have no self-interested incentive to get more than they need.

In fact I think the opposite of what you posit will happen, as the current system tends to financially reward doctors (not patients) for excessive use of drugs and medical tests. A good single-payer program would emphasize primary care and remove financial incentives for doctors to over-test and over-medicate, leading to a decrease in overuse of medical resources.