July 31, 2014
Prepare yourselves for a shock – federal government bureaucracies produce incompetence.
One would be hard put to find evidence of government-produced EXCELLENCE at ANY level, and most of us would be satisfied to discover a modicum of COMPETENCE.
In this case, though, the GOVERNMENT ITSELF has CONFIRMED its OWN BUREAUCRATIC INCOMPETENCE.
Critics charged that the government could not possibly run a command economy in the health-insurance industry in the manner Obamacare promised, as the tailoring of product to individual need would make such top-down control impossible.
The GAO report shows a more BASIC PROBLEM with GOVERNEMT-RUN COMMAND ECONOMIES.
The massive expansion of bureaucracies needed to handle all of these MOVING PARTS, even inadequately, disperses ACCOUNTABILITY and RESPONSIBILITY so far and wide as to make both EVAPORATE altogether.
We have seen the same happen at the VA, the IRS, and even the State Department in its handling of the Benghazi consulate. There are no other options for diplomacy or tax collection other than a government monopoly, but that’s not true for health insurance to veterans or Americans on the whole.
The VA scandal and this GAO report shows why top-down control should be limited to those functions that strictly relate to governance – and why we should leave everything else to the private sector with government as a disinterested regulator.