Sometimes I wonder if it would ever occur to the polity to have off of it. Let's just hire some guy, you know, and enough of trying to redistribute wealth or making grand sweeping policy. This healthcare thing isn't just normal bad policy politics, it's also the sort of bad political policy; the sort of thing that makes you a one term president, soon to be considered wackier than Carter.
But, of course, we can't forget that Bush started this whole shindig just like Hoover before FDR. Folks like to pretend that Hoover did nothing, because it fits a narrative, but you can go back and find out Hoover and FDR only differed in degree, not in kind. Then you realize the whole game is flawed.

In other fields people with proven track records get hired to do relatively specific jobs. In politics, people who know very little about anything have every incentive to make laws about everything. They have every reason to put their hands in the cookie jar and take everything they can now. Their political careers can only last so long; so what if it goes bankrupt later?

It seems to me the right to vote is significantly less valuable than the right not to have vast portions of one's life being run via political means.