In my opinion Medicare and Medicaid and now Obamacare are hands down the number one reason that healthcare is as screwed up and unaffordable as it is. Because of the enormous bloat of these programs, the government's picking of winners and losers, the inescapable waste and fraud, and the inability of anybody to really know how much they do cost the taxpayer because so much of the true cost is buried and obscured within the fathomless bureaucracy, I will just say that I believe the private sector and individual states could have done a much better job. And that too is based on my understanding of history. But for this thread let's don't get bogged down with yet another debate over the merits or lack thereof of government healthcare.
But your point re the mountain lion is well taken. Everything on earth is interrelated and it can be argued that a study of anything could be beneficial in some way. But who in the federal government is qualified to say that the study of mountain lion habitat would be more beneficial and deserving of funding than the study of something else? How much of the people's money should be confiscated to pay people to study something plus fund the bureaucracy that allocates the money? And who sees to it that under the guise of benefitting mountain lions, the federal government won't overreach to take more power for itself and more rights from the people?
Certainly some scientific research is appropriate at the federal level, and some federal laws to protect our resources can arguably be merited. But I would be more confident that such efforts would be much less self-serving, more honest, and ultimately more beneficial if we had true public servants in Washington who were not there to use the people's money to increase their own power, prestige, influence, and personal fortunes.
I'd say your entire debate of health care costs is way, way off the mark, and completely implausible. Since it's not the topic here, yes, we can safely drop that.
As to the latter two paragraphs, just the following: You go to government with the folks you have. Wishing they're angels won't make it so. Moreover, the enlightened self-government the Founders have conceived has a downside in that it requires watchful, alert, attentive citizens to notice gross abuse and make themselves heard. That is so all over the world. As they say, in a democracy you get the government you deserve. I, for one, will go with the government option here, since they have a long history of caring for the forests, and private corporations' profit interests probably won't serve them well. And yes, the decisions as to what research to fund, which of them shall have a higher priority, shall be made by lawmakers and, if so governed by applicable law, bureaucrats specifically tasked with making that decision. If they, in the course of doing this, overreach and infringe on citizens' rights, I'll remind you of the watchful, alert, attentive citizens above.
