Give Massachusetts credit for setting audacious health care goals. It took the lead in guaranteeing near-universal health insurance coverage for its residents, providing a template for the federal reforms to follow.

Now a bill passed last week by the Legislature — and enthusiastically endorsed by Gov. Deval Patrick — aims to tackle the much harder problem of controlling health care costs. Massachusetts will be the first state to try to cap overall health care spending, both private and public, so that it will grow no faster than the state economy.     NYT

Also see The Atlantic

Astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson gets it right when asked why we will still need NASA now that we have private endeavors like SpaceX.

Private enterprise can never lead a space frontier. It’s not possible because a space frontier is expensive, it has unknown risks and it has unquantified risks. Historically, governments have done this. They have drawn the maps, they have found where the trade winds are, they have invented the new tools to go where no one has gone before. Then, when the routines are set up, you cede that to private enterprise.      Time

Good article that focuses on the views of someone not in politics, who has a good sense of history.

It’s easier to appreciate the primary role of government with regards to the funding of ’final frontier’ space exploration, but it exists elsewhere as well whenever the risks are too high and the profits too uncertain for private enterprise to be involved.  It’s not ideology; it’s history that is still relevant today.