If the government can't even run food service . . .

“. . . how in the hell is it going to run our entire health care system that comprises approximately 15% of our nation’s GDP and has much more at stake than a badly done New York Strip?”

(via The Happy Hospitalist)

Comments

Evan
If the government can’t even run food service, how can it possibly run a military that has nuclear weapons, or defend us against other nations threatening us, or insure the peace and tranquility, or regulate interstate commerce, or …
Yes. All governmental actions by all governments throughout history are shown to be failures by this anecdotal N of 1 story about bad food in a cafeteria.
I’m sure no private businesses outsource their cafeteria services.
Geez Kevin. This could be the weakest post I have ever seen you make.
Anonymous
No, not ALL government actions by ALL governments throughout history are shown to be failures.
But THIS particular govenrment is remarkably inept. Any body of PUBLIC servants who waste MILLIONS and MILLIONS of dollars over the course of years on something as simple to manage as a cafeteris and don’t give a hoot are not worthy of keeping their jobs.
Do they inspire confidnce in YOU to manage the segment of the economy that deals with health?
Geez Evan, that could be the weakest retort I’ve ever seen you make.
Anonymous
And I’m sure the private sector is flawless. Like, oh, I don’t know… United Healthcare, perhaps? Enron? Wal-Mart?
The mind boggles.
The Happy Hospitalist
Ah, but when the private sector fails, it goes bankrupt. When the government fails, it just prints more money. When you have no risk of failure, you have no risk to excel.
Anonymous
Worse, when the government fails, it just escalates it’s “governing” which means more loss of freedom for all.
As a government bureaucrat myself, I assure you (and history shows) that the natural kneejerk response of those of us in the control business to a failure is to believe that the failure is due to not having enough control, enough rules, and heavy enough punishments for those who won’t comply.
It isn’t an N of 1, The servers of Kevin’s hosts would be taxed to try to store a file inserting everything else that you could insert into place of “run food service”.
Lets start with just about everything having to do with the response of every level of government to Katrina (which silliness is still going on full speed) and end with the debacle of the abandoned effort to computerize the 2010 census–which by the way is an infinitely simpler task than creating a national medical information system which the politicians promise all the time.
The very thought makes my skin crawl.
Anonymous
Who should run it? Physicians? Most can’t even run their own offices.
Payne Hertz
“Ah, but when the private sector fails, it goes bankrupt. When the government fails, it just prints more money. When you have no risk of failure, you have no risk to excel.”
The US healthcare system is a textbook example of market failure, and yet is continues to be grotesquely profitable as well as corrupt, fraud-plagued and inefficient. Perhaps it’s that government-sanctioned monopoly that protects it from the repercussions of that failure? Naaaah. Believe me, you don’t want to see the medical system exposed to “market discipline.”
The idea that a poorly run cafeteria is an indictment of government run health care is utterly fatuous. How can you seriously make such a connection without casually resorting to naked ideology? Do you care to judge the quality of the private health care in this country by the quality of hospital cafeterias and the “food” served by them? Considering the same people who manage the hospitals have direct control over their cafeterias, it would seem a more apt comparison, but equally ridiculous.
For a more realistic comparison, compare the efficiency of Medicare with the waste, fraud and inefficiency of the private insurance carriers. That’s what we need to consider when debating single-payer versus the running abortion of rip-off private health insurance.
Anonymous
“For a more realistic comparison, compare the efficiency of Medicare with the waste, fraud and inefficiency of the private insurance carriers.”
Ok lets compare federally mandated health care to private health care. Lets see…would you want your wife delivering a baby on the Sioux reservation in Pine Ridge Hospital or in Rapid City? Think that is an isolated example? Would you prefer a cholecystectomy on the Navajo reservation in Chenle or in Phoenix? Or maybe you would prefer your child’s traumatic brain injury being cared for at Tomah WI Veterans Administration over Mayo.
When the time comes that government can manage the health care for those whom it is already responsible, then it can think about managing health care for the rest of us. When the time comes that the rest of us are standing in line to be treated at Tomah, Pine Ridge, Chenle etc. because the quality of care is better there than anywhere else, that is when the government can manage my health care.
Payne Hertz
So I guess the game here is compare the worst of the public sector with the best of the private sector. I can’t comment on medical care in Bumfuk, Iowa, but here where I live, in upstate NY, the medical care I get at the VA is vastly superior to what the private sector has to offer. A female veteran I know recently had dual mastectomies done there, and the total time from her reporting a lump in her breast to the time they did surgery was two weeks, and they had a top plastic surgeon to reconstruct her breasts afterwards.
Compare that to another friend who recentnly died of lung cancer because when she complained of chest pain, her private sector doctor told her that the pain was due to her being old and he didn’t believe in doing “excessive” tests, so they never found the cancer until she went to the ER 2 years later as a precondition for PT for the pain, and that’s when they discovered it. Amazingly, she was taken seriously and not labeled a “drug seeker” which is what you usually get at that hospital if you have fibromyalgia, take Oxycontin for it, and tell them you have chest pain. Her cancer doctor refused to treat her increased pain for fear of “losing his license” and also refused to measure her coumadin levels, so she had to go back to the jerk who had failed to diagnose her cancer to get her pain meds and coumadin checked, a totally unnecessary trip for a very sick woman.When she was admitted to the hospital, we had to fight to get her adequate pain treatment and had to threaten them with legal action before they would treat her pain adequately.
I had a friend go to the ER for heart palpitations, and she waited over 4 hours to be seen. They then decided to admit her overnight and she got an echocardiogram in the morning. The price: $5,000. I had another friend whose mother broke her hip and had to be hospitalized and get surgery. The insurance company refused to pay because she didn’t get prior authorization for the treatment, and now the hospital is coming after her daughter’s husband to pay the $30,000 bill. I had another friend whose next door neighbor injured her head falling off a ladder, and they flew her across the Hudson on a 15 minute helicopter ride because they claimed to be unable to treat a skull fracture at the hospital they brought her to. The price: $30,000. At that price, I’d bet those two hospitals have a nice little deal ferrying patients back and forth all day.
You call this a system that works? Get a grip.
Anonymous
ph:
I’ve read your posts. I know you’re much better than this. You condemn N of 1 with N of 5 (all anecdotal). We all have horror stories as well as miracles of the current system.
Installing a single payer system because the current system has failings is kind of like installing a Furher because democracy is not perfect.
My point of post was that the government already has a health care obligation to millions of Americans and fails that obligation miserably. To burden it further and expect a different outcome is foolish. Convince me that the government can do it better without the argument that the current system sucks, is error prone and is inefficient.
It is unfortunate that you do not know nor care about bumf*** Iowa. Your suggested solution to the health care problem effects them also. The cities I mentioned and their respective referral centers are very real for those under the government’s care. Denegrating that reality does not make your case.
Under the current system, your unfortunate friends always had the freedom to vote with their feet. One of the by products of the current system is if you do not like the care you get, you can walk down the street, float down the river or move to another region where care may be better. Think Senator Kennedy.
The folks I speak of (who are under the single payer system you advocate) don’t have that freedom of choice. They have to see whomever the IHS or VA lets them see. Good, bad, indifferent.
Again, when there are lines out the door at IHS and VA clinics, then the government can take on the rest of us.
Anonymous
The nice thing about freedom is that the VA patients and IHS patients do have the freedom now to scorn that system and go to a different system now. Our plurality of systems and the freedom to purchases care outside of the one given to us by a third party is a critical freedom that we must not give up.
What we have now is not a single coherent system but a plurality of systems–and if we are to remain free we must keep it that way.
Umm Yasmin
I guess the same way it runs schools, emergency services, the taxation department, and a whole host of other structures in society

If the government can’t even run food service . . .

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