The Trump administration wants to turn over more of our government functions like Social Security, environmental protection, and law enforcement to private enterprises, which claim to be more efficient and cost-effective.
Looking back at history, there are three specific areas of our economy that have been turned over to for-profit enterprises, with the end results being fewer people having access to services and professionals at an ever-greater price.
Health care • Over the past 50 years or so, our health care system has essentially migrated from the enclave of not-for-profit to for-profit, under the guise of “health maintenance organizations” or “preferred provider organizations” that do nothing to control costs but only shift more and more of them onto their policyholders through the use of copays, deductibles, or similar fees. As a result, the U.S. has the most expensive health care per capita in the world yet does not have any measurement metrics (life expectancy, infant mortality, health-related quality of life, body composition, cholesterol/blood pressure, etc.) in the top 10 compared to the world.
Corrections • The concept of private for-profit prisons grew out of the increase in crime that took place during the 1970s and 1980s and the rapid expansion of the nation’s prison population. According to the Bureau of Judicial Statistics, by the end of 2022, of the 1.2 million people in federal and state prisons, 8%, or 90,873, were in private prisons. While they can be cost-effective and innovative compared to government-run prisons, there is also great concern about ethical considerations, reduced oversight, and negative impacts on inmate conditions and staff quality inherent in a for-profit focus for criminal justice.
Some Arizona-based studies (as reported in The Wesleyan Argus in 2025) have shown that private prisons are not always cost-effective and may actually be more expensive to operate than public prisons.
Philanthropy • Philanthropy is defined by the Charities Aid Foundation as “the desire to promote the welfare of others, normally through the generous donation of money to good causes.” Wealthy philanthropists in the past such as John D. Rockefeller or Andrew Carnegie, or current ones such as Warren Buffett, George Soros, Melinda Gates, Charles Koch and others have dedicated their lives and fortunes to promote the welfare of others. Unfortunately, our complex tax code has been targeted over the past 40 years towards the billionaires’ accumulation of wealth, and the resultant redistribution of wealth has created this structure where these benefits disproportionally favor the wealthy, resulting in loss of public revenue and greater reliance on this structure.
Before we allow more of our public services to be turned over to the private sector, we need to review these effects and learn the lessons of history.
Daniel Herbert-Voss, White City
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