Waste occurs when money is spent in a legitimate way but, due to a poor system or a lack of follow-up, it doesn't achieve its goals.

Fraud occurs when individuals deliberately warp the system to get payments which they would not, under correct circumstances, be given. If what the doctors did was legal, the law needs to be changed. If it wasn't, they need to be prosecuted. I would be satisfied with having them work in a public clinic for peanuts for a few years in lieu of jail time.

Do your social program figures include Social Security? Just curious.

Your church program is to be commended. I bet you have plenty of follow-up. Part of the problem I have with probation authorities is their lack of follow-up, because they don't have enough people for all the cases they have.

Who pays for the drug treatment program, if needed, and the visits to the doctor to make sure people are clean?

How many single-parent families are there who need your church's help -- and they need more help than families with two adults already -- that don't get it? If a single parent can present a death certificate for the absent spouse, is that person deemed virtuous enough to get into the program?

One reason government is in this business is that private organizations make exclusionary rules. Some of them are good rules, like the one about seeking employment. Others, like your two-parent rule (which makes your success rate ever so much higher than a program that deals with the rest of the needy), are arbitrary. Tell me that a single parent struggling to raise children is less worthy of a church's help. Would it be better, then, to abandon the children, or to stay in an abusive marriage so a church will help?

In explaining one possible part of the solution, you have also illuminated one part of the problem.