We had a natural gas leak at the house a few years back. Mercifully, it was at the meter outside. But who knew whether escaping gas would have the good sense to stay outdoors, or whether a spark from a passing firefly might incinerate the whole neighborhood?

So we looked in the Yellow Pages under fire departments. It turned out we had only one. And drat the luck, it was run by the government. At least it had an easy phone number.

The 911 call did not yield the slow response we expected — of a truckload of bureaucrats, carrying paperwork. Amazingly, a truckload of well-trained firefighters responded quickly, with tools needed to protect us.

I was pleasantly surprised. You see, I have always been leery of socialized fire protection.

On a far less urgent matter, we once needed a police officer to look over a case of vandalism. It turned out there was only one police department in the phone book, too. Ugh. Socialized law enforcement. Nice guy, though, and very professional.

Don't even get me going about roads. There are about 4 million miles of socialized U.S. highways, of which I'll bet I seldom use more than 100 and have probably seen only 20,000 in my life. Why shouldn't all roads be toll roads? Private companies could hold the price down by building competing highways, side-by-side.

Silly thoughts like these occur to me every time I read or hear something about the national health care debate.

Even in a free, capitalist country, a certain amount of socialism is understood to be essential to safety and efficiency. And some of the best traits of free enterprise — involving economies of scale, and checks and balances — are still represented.

Although we do not exactly have competing police, we do have layers of cops. A crime in my home is simultaneously within the jurisdiction of the city police, county sheriff and state police. Depending on what happened, maybe the FBI and other agencies. They work together, and sometimes watch over each other's shoulders.

The taxpayers of tiny St. Jacob don't need a long-ladder fire truck often enough to justify the price. But thanks to mutual aid agreements, Highland will send its ladder truck over in a jiffy.

We do not have competing tollways, but we do have competitive bidding for road construction.

If we accept these flashes of socialism as necessary, do we necessarily accept that taxes are the best way to pay for them?

Applying the logic of our health insurance system, perhaps we should consider providing basic services as job benefits. Perhaps employer-paid street maintenance. Or police protection. Or at least employer-paid fire insurance. Does that really make any less sense than employer-paid health insurance?

Heck, privately-financed fire protection was common in our history. In many American cities into the 19th century, insurance companies wrote fire policies and issued plaques to identify customers' buildings. Private fire companies competed to arrive first at a blaze, contain the flames and thus win a fee from the insurance company.

There were plenty of drawbacks. One was that some aggressive departments would hire thugs to keep rival firefighters from getting to fireplugs for water. Such a person was called a "plug-ugly." The term endures today as a synonym for a bully.

I'd like to hear from anyone who thinks our lives and property were safer then.

Paying for public services as a fringe benefit might be plausible if everybody worked. But as it is, those who are employed would be paying for all. That is, of course, largely the case with U.S. health care.

As the health care reform debate continues, at least a few plug-uglies are doing some shouting, even occasional shoving, on each side.

What I don't hear is much philosophical discussion about where might be a logical place to draw a line between capitalism and acceptable socialism — and what we should expect from our pooled tax dollars.

Specifically, I'm trying to decide whether it makes sense that regardless of my economic station in life, various layers of government assure me of the tax-supported services of myriad people — police officers, firefighters, teachers, astronauts, construction flaggers, fishery biologists, archaeologists, dogcatchers, soldiers and librarians, to name a very few. But not doctors to treat my injury or illness.

If our gas leak had blown up in my face, taxes would have paid to put out the flames and to route traffic around the scene and to shovel debris from the street. But the medical bill would have been on me.