One need only compare the sense of dispatch at Federal Express with
time endured to send a package via the U.S. Postal Service to recognize
the federal government doesn’t do things quite as well as the private
sector.
It doesn’t even function as well as state bureaucracies.
Now ObamaCare, which socializes an industry larger than the economies
of France or Britain, is proving Health and Human Services can be more
incompetent than many Third World governments.
These past few weeks, poor Mexico could sign up urban poor for health
care with less mess than Washington did folks needing insurance in San
Antonio.
ObamaCare,
which socializes an industry larger than the economies of France or
Britain, is proving Health and Human Services can be more incompetent
than many Third World governments.
In Europe, national health care systems deliver coverage for
everyone, at remarkably lower cost, and in countries with per capita
income comparable to the United States, a lot better care. The United
States spends 18 percent of GDP on health care; Germany and Holland
spend about 12 with better results.
One only need look behind the rollout of the federal health insurance exchanges to see why.
President Obama sees every decision -- from the timing for sending
his mother-in-law a birthday card to those required for the rollout of
the exchange -- as a political calculation.
The bureaucrats at Health and Human Services ordered CGI, the private
contractor primarily responsible for designing the exchanges, not to
permit visitors to browse prices anonymously.
That would allow young people with decent jobs to compare the prices
they must pay for insurance, or face harsh penalties, with the
subsidized prices offered other young folks with lower wage jobs.
After all, those jarring differences might cause young voters, whose
allegiance to President Obama has been weakened by an economic recovery
that does not deliver decent prospects for their advancement, to vote
for whatever Republican promises less government and dares to run
against Hillary Clinton.
This political decision was made less than a month before the exchanges went live and threw a terrible wrench into the rollout.
Like the IRS decision to harass conservative non-profits and
community activists, it is not clear how high up that decision was made
-- was it made by the HHS division directly supervising CGI, Secretary
Sebelius or the White House?
Fast forward to today, when Ms. Sebelius laments that the online
marketplace should require five years to construct and a year of
testing.
Yet California, whose economy is larger than most countries and
problems as complex, managed to get the job done. Its exchange and those
of other states, designed independent of federal incompetence, are
running well despite initial glitches.
A basic problem Washington does not like to admit is that the federal
civil service is a refuge for overpaid, politically-motivated and
distracted-from-task statists, who are often cynical about the private
sector and insensitive to citizens’ needs.
Like the Godfather’s henchmen, they look to what will please their
political masters and act accordingly, even if it tramples civil
liberties.
Consider the allegedly independent handiwork of the IRS bureaucrats
on non-profits and citizens supporting conservative causes or Justice
Department’s wholesale violation of privacy of AP communications.
American universities’ schools of business and engineering attract
the best and the brightest -- not so schools of public policy, education
and the softer social sciences that train foot soldiers that fill
offices at HHS, Justice and the like.
Democrats in congress are now raising questions about HHS reliance on
private contractors, but the truth is federal government simply does
not have the resources to pull off something as large and complex as the
health care exchange.
If the president wants ObamaCare and other federal initiatives to
succeed, then he and his cabinet can’t make every decision a political
calculation. And they need to recognize that the government civil
service needs much more competent employees, not political activists
masquerading as public servants.