This argument can be applied to anything. Should we trust them to do anything? Perhaps we should just shut the federal government down, since they're completely untrustworthy, and go back to being independent states! The specific type of problem with this argument is that it's ridiculously generalized. In any large government, things will go wrong. You cannot reason from these failures to a presumption of total incompetence for all functions. There is absolutely no possibility of having a federal government for a country this size which never makes a mistake. That is a ridiculous standard to hold it to.

As much as I don't want to argue against your premise that the federal government is inefficient and allows huge programs such as Medicare to be gamed and defrauded of billions of dollars, this question is kind of a straw man. That is, it's BECAUSE we have these large and all-encompassing federal programs that the issue of fraud and corruption is as bad (and expensive) as it is. But the fact is that even "private" insurance is often bilked of millions of dollars through phony claims and mismanagement, among other ills. The difference is that those companies also have a lot more incentive to spend what it takes to plug those holes, or they go out of business. And that's part of the problem with government programs: they never go out of business. So the short answer to your Q is, "No, of course not." In fact, we'll be adding a huge new source of waste, fraud and corruption, and new disincentives to providers -- and huge new ways to game the system and drain it of cash, at the expense of the taxpayers and (always) the ones who need it the most. But I guess its supporters will be warm and cozy with the notion that it is somehow "fair" now. As if.

Yes. I'm sorry if you're looking for a more detailed answer for your obvious "false-comparison" question. At least the government has a papertrail for the 'too many stimulus checks'. Which is more than the Bu$h Administration could provide when required by law for their records.