[neltnerb]

Off the top of my head, and certainly some are up for debate. But consider how well these systems worked prior to government intervention.

You may think medicare, for instance, is run horribly -- but I'm pretty confident that seniors are far happier with it than they were pawning off their possessions to get medical treatment prior to it being created.

- Medicaid

- Medicare

- The USPS (which, let's be honest, is freaking amazing for the price)

- Social security

- Basic research

- The military (remember our private security contractors and how much more horrible they were?)

- The fire department

- The police (can you imagine how horrible a private police force would be?)

And on the flip side, consider how atrocious private prisons are compared to federally operated ones.

I'm sure there are many, many others...

[chimeracoder]

> You may think medicare, for instance, is run horribly -- but I'm pretty confident that seniors are far happier with it than they were pawning off their possessions to get medical treatment prior to it being created.

Sure, but empirically, seniors are far happier with privatized Medicare plans than they are with publicly-administered Medicare plans. Original Medicare has the lowest satisfaction rates of all major Medicare plans - far lower than the lowest of the privately-managed plans.

Medicaid is run at the state level, but the same applies there as well - privately managed Medicaid plans are gaining popularity because they deliver better medical results at lower prices.

> The USPS (which, let's be honest, is freaking amazing for the price)

USPS is a mixed bag, but it isn't a straightforward comparison, because the USPS is statutorily protected from competition. For example, by law, all private carriers are required to charge at least twice what USPS charges for a first-class letter - so when you say it's "amazing for the price", we're already dealing with a warped perception of what mail delivery costs.

Most of the other examples you list don't address OP's question ("Do we have examples of the government running a service better than the private sector"), because there hasn't been a private sector for those in modern history for us to compare them with.

[neltnerb]

If the proposals on the table were to simply allow private companies to offer competing options, I would have few concerns that I could back up with factual analysis.

I suspect it would be highly case-by-case, which is fine and how a deliberative legislative body should function. I'd still be extremely leery of private police, military, fire, or infrastructure, it just seems like a transparently bad idea.

Like our security contractors paid by the military, who cost vastly more than public employees and have far less oversight. And who (possibly coincidentally, but come on) are to blame for the worst abuses by our forces overseas.

But for some specific, narrow market (like space travel or health care or even retirement funds) I'd be absolutely willing to give them a chance as long as it didn't break the existing government system.

Charter schools seem like a good case study in that, which I say not because the data completely backs up the idea that government run is always better, but because it's a very complex system with many examples that provide insight in both directions.

[AtheistOfFail]

> Medicaid is run at the state level, but the same applies there as well - privately managed Medicaid plans are gaining popularity because they deliver better medical results at lower prices.

This is disputable. Private companies are also motivated by greed which means they'll cut corners to save penies.