I'm sorry Linda, but your assumptions simply are not true.

Police, firefighters, the roads we drive on, the schools we send our children to, and those hospitals which do occasionally save lives.... these things are not paid for by the federal government. They are paid for by the states. Most hospitals are privately owned, they are corporations, businesses. With the exception of some hospitals like the Veterans Administration, which has a terrible reputation. Fact is, the government cannot even keep it's promises to take care of military servicemen, many of them end up homeless, their medical care neglected or shoddy. Another fact, some states, such as Florida, do not have an income tax, but they use their sales taxes and other user fee taxes, which are just slightly higher than the sales taxes and user fee taxes in states that also have an income tax, to pay for police, firemen, roads, schools etc. And their services are just as good, sometimes better, than states that also require an income tax.

If medicine could find a cure for corporate greed, then perhaps something like socialized medicine would have a chance in a place like corporate America.

Alternative medicine is the new name for what used to be known, many times, as grandma's kitchen remedy. The herbs in your Essiac tea for instance Sunshine, are not new discoveries. Corporate medicine, pharmaceutical companies and the AMA, have worked relentlessly for years to give these things a bad name so that doctors are afraid to prescribe them and young doctors are no longer taught them. They have tried, and continue to try, to make alternative medicine illegal, they would love to see herbal remedies and vitamins outlawed so that everyone is forced to rely on them only. They have already been somewhat successful in that.