The point is not that government cannot do anything right, the point is that private enterprise can do it better because competition makes them lean and mean and allows greater freedom to implement necessary changes, whereas government has no competition and is therefore fat and lazy and slow to take action when required. Keep in mind that every time we give up a responsibility to the government, we also lose a freedom.
I personally do not believe the government has done as good a job monitoring the social security system as a private enterprise would have done. They misdirected and misused contributed funds and funneled them into areas for which they were never intended. Had these funds been safely invested for the benefit of those enrolled in the system, there would be more than enough money in the social security fund today instead of a ton of worthless or nearly worthless US I.O.U's which the government may never have the funds to redeem. Remember, we workers have paid into social security over our entire working lifetimes more than enough to sustain us in retirement if said funds had been wisely invested. We have also paid into medicare our entire working lives, and we continue to pay during retirement for everything except catastrophic coverage (of which the government provides a limited amount of coverage for free).
Newly