I recently watched this 60 min video about Medicare fraud which was an excellent reminder of how when a government program starts with the best of intentions to fix a problem there isn't a real motivation to keep it competitive, so eventually it becomes fraught with waste and in this case fraud. After watching this video ask yourself two questions:
1. Is the government really capable of handling a bigger public program, like the one that just passed the Senate?
2. If you are a thief or a criminal can you imagine the possibilities if said program passes?
Enjoy:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/23/60minutes/main5414390.shtml?tag=currentVideoInfo;segmentUtilities
PS. The video link is made up of two or more lines so you'll have to paste them into your address bar separately.
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10 comments:
Thanks a lot for sharing that Paul, the video is very enlightening. It does make me curious as to exactly WHY it is that a private company would NEVER be so stupid, but the government always seems to be that stupid.
...because if the govenment screws up and wastes money it doesn't matter they can always borrow more. If a private company screws up and wastes money than it will go out of buisness, people will loose their jobs... all sorts of bad things so it acctually has an insentive to be efficient.
I'm sure that is part of the reason, but I am convinced that there must be more to it than that. Certainly the bureaucracy that is in charge of medicare has some amount of responsibility and duty to make sure that sort of thing doesn't happen. And they probably have to answer in some way if they are not successful. What do private companies put in place that the government doesn't?
Why is the government so wasteful? Answering that simple question would mean the difference of a lot of people not supporting socialism. I think a lot of people don't understand the government is so wasteful, or don't understand why it can't be made to be less wasteful.
I think one reason for that might be that the government programs are usually dealing with a lot more complexity than private companies.
It isn't at all surprising that Medicare isn't lucrative when you consider that they are providing health care to people who otherwise cant' afford it.
Also, the more time that passes with Ryan working in the medical field the more I learn about how many pools Medicare is dipping it's toes into. For example, I just found out yesterday that the small salary that medical residents make is actually paid by Medicare.
If Medicare didn't pay that salary medical residents would have to spend 4-7 more years going into debt (on top of their already astronomical med school debt) as the hospitals can't afford to pay them. I wonder what else Medicare is taking care of that we don't even know about?
So while the system may not be perfect I for one am grateful for it as I am grateful for public education which is also not a perfect system. I guess I'm just not convinced that if the government weren't stepping in in these areas that someone else would. I think these programs are a response to something lacking in our society.
Interesting comments Rachel, Thanks for the input. It is always fun to have discussions here.
So did you watch the video in the original post? If you didn't yet, I would be interested to get your take on that. It talked about ASTRONOMICAL fraud within the medicare system. For example, according to the law enforcement in Miami, money transactions with medicare fraud has surpassed the illegal drug industry.
I disagree with the complexity issue that you brought up. Take any of the big private insurance companies for instance. They have to figure out what to cover, what not to cover, what to charge, how to deal with laws and restrictions around those charges and coverage, and also how to keep the millions that would love to steal from them from getting away with it. They do all of that quite effectively by the way. It's true that they need an army of cubical workers to get it done, which is one reason why medicine costs so much, but they still get it done. They HAVE TO. They are a business.
I still don't understand completely why it is not possible for government to run more like a business.
As for the medical residency payment, if Medicare didn't pay for it, one of the following would happen:
1. Doctors would make a higher salary because less people would want to be doctors and deal with the extra debt.
2. Hospitals would pay for medical residents and charge more for hospital services to offset the extra cost. This would be done with business EFFICIENCY rather than government INEFFICIENCY.
3. Laws could be changed to reduce the amount of training that is mandated for doctors.
It's pretty simple to understand why governments are wasteful when compared to private businesses.
Technically it is possible for government to run more like a business, or better than a business for that matter. However human greed/nature being what it is people want to get a lot of stuff for a minimum amount of effort. So employees/workers/managers/everyone will naturally want to work less for more reward. However, In a competitive/capitalistic economy making money = hard work and tough decisions. In the case of private companies if people are lazy/ wasteful/incompetent then the company loses money. If the company loses money it becomes the responsibility of the employer to fire those lazy individuals. Employees don't like to fire people but it's a necessity or else the company will go out of business and no one will be employed thanks to the bad apples. Or if the management is bad and isn’t providing a good product at a competitive price than the company will fail...hence efficiency.
Now let’s say the same private business bought a bunch of tanks and guns and forced everyone to buy their product. Would the company still need to worry about making money based on the merits of it’s product/price? Would the manager still be as likely to fire people? Would the employees be as likely to work as hard? No, no, and no, therefore the company would obviously be less efficient...guess what the private business who bought all the tanks and guns would be the same thing as a government.
I actually like democrats/liberals with their Obama stickers proudly displayed on their Prius. Most of them love humanity and want to make the world a better place. You can't blame their good intentions. What they don't understand is that their government programs create inefficiencies and rob freedoms which often make the solution worse than the problem.
Sparrow, I agree with your argument. To me it makes a lot of sense, but there is one faucet that you left out, so I am going to play devil's advocate and ask that you address that missing piece.
If you put that argument to Nancy Polosi, she would respond something like the following: (CAPITALIZED words are common buzz words on the campaign trail.)
"But see that is why we need more OVERSIGHT, and ACCOUNTABILITY. We need people in place that will HOLD THEM RESPONSIBLE for RESULTS that THE AMERICAN PEOPLE will be pleased with."
Get the idea? While one solution to the problem would be to leave government out and let things be taken care of by a much more efficient free market, their solution is to create more oversight groups to FORCE workers and managers to work hard anyway.
So given the premise, which is the obvious whopping inefficiency of government, why does that not work? Why is government still so much more inefficient?
You are asking why we cannot solve the inefficiency of a government bureaucracy by forming a new inefficient bureaucracy. That would be like taming the octopus by giving him more tentacles. Government projects, whether they are called "oversite" or not have as their first goal to perpetuate themselves; secondarily (hopefully) to do whatever job they were created for. It is so ironic that we expect government to solve a problem, and then expect government to solve the problems that creates. This is the mindset that eats away our liberties layer by layer. We must somehow stop the almost automatic reaction of seeing a problem and thinking the government should do something to fix it.
Great comments Mom. I especially liked the example of the octopus, too funny! I don't think I need to add anything more because I don't see how Devil's advocate, or Pelosi could argue with that.
I guess just like any poorly run problematic system optimists (like Obama) are constantly trying to improve it, telling themselves that there is hope for fixing the problem if we just try something new. They will continue trying for eternity, while what we argue is instead of trying to fix a deeply flawed system let's do something that works better. Coincidentally they say the same thing about capitalism so the argument goes round and round.
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