The other day I was on the community forum that was setup for people who live in my small little area of the world. I usually just lurk for the community news since just about everyone on the site is frothing at the mouth conservative, and I’m your basic bleeding heart. I've discovered that it's like talking to a rock to talk to those people, so I get the skinny on local happenings and stay out of the political discussions folder. If I want to know what these people think, I’ll listen to Rush, because it’s pretty obvious that’s were most of these guys are getting their talking points.
However the other day I accidentally clicked on the wrong spot, and decided, what the heck, I’ll poke around and see if anything has changed. The short answer is “no”, but something caught my eye and stuck in my craw, a discussion of universal health care and how private is ALWAYS better.
I’m going to come right and say it: Private industry ain’t all that. The insistence that the American Businessman is such a savvy creature and everything is better in private industry has become one of my biggest pet peeves.
I know this is heresy in our capitalist society; I fully expect the Spanish Inquisition to come tearing down my aisle any minute now.
I know government is not perfect. I know government is not efficient. I am not advocating we turn commie. I’m just not worshiping at the Idol of American Business. I’m kicking sand in the face of anyone who will tell you that Private is Always Better.
To listen to the Privatization crowd, all we have to do to solve the world’s problems is to the turn everything over to the Great American Businessmen and the Capitalism Fairy will bop us on the heads with her magic wand, while rainbows spontaneously appear and unicorns prance in the meadow. Life will be easy and efficient and cheap.
However if you look closer you will discover that the fairy’s real name is Carl and he has a 5 o’clock shadow that would scratch paint off the walls. The rainbows are painted plywood and the unicorns are really nasty-ass Shetland ponies who bite, with cardboard tubes taped to their foreheads.
Wanna bitch about the amount of waste and inefficiency in government? Here’s a dirty little secret for you: private enterprise is wasteful and inefficient too. Rude state workers? Dude, have you tried to shop at Macy’s recently? Government workers don’t do their jobs? Yeah, shoulda been with me on the phone with me to AT&T recently when they turned off our DSL even though we had paid the bill.
Truth be told, if I have to choose between waiting in line at the DMV or Macy’s (or any department store), I’ll pick the DMV. At the DMV, I am given a number when I enter, along with the forms I need to fill out before I get to the window. I go sit in a chair and fill out my form, and wait until my number is called. I am served in the order in which I arrived.
When I go to Macy’s, and I first have to find an open cashier, then I have to STAND in line, no chair for me, or anyone for that matter. I am often not served in the order in which I arrived. If the phone rings, the caller will take precedence over me. If the cashier whose line I am standing needs a break, they close the line and direct to me over to the next department, where I stand in line again. If the person ahead of me in line has a long complicated transaction, it is up to me to scan the other cashiers and calculate if I am better off moving a the new line.
I moved a few years ago, so I had the displeasure to deal with various private and public entities during the moving process. Here’s the score card for those of you playing along at home:
Public: Water and sewer required a short trip the local utilities district, I was in and out in about 10 minutes. After that was a 15 minute phone call to the garbage pick up service. Trip to the Post Office to get my mailbox key: 15 minutes. Registering the kids for school about 30 minutes each, mostly to verify their shots were up to date and enter their old school records in. Basically each public entity acted like they dealt with people who had moved before.
Private: three words people: The Phone Company. It took 2 weeks to get a simple phone number change fixed. First they assigned me a new number, problem is, they assigned the SAME EXACT number to someone else. Customer Service person can not fix it, so I am told the Technical services people would contact me within 24 hours to get it straightened out. They don’t, I have to call them back after 48 hours. Technical Services tell me that the number assigned to me is indeed my number that the other person has a new number. We pass out our new number to friends, family, schools, credit card companies, banks, utilities, etc. We move into our new house. Turns out the phone company lied, the other person had the number, we had bupkus. We find this out when my mom calls the number we gave her and discovers that the voice on the answering machine is not yours truly or Mr Fly. I call the phone the company. AGAIN. (at this point I don’t even have to look up the number, I can dial from memory) I relate long, sad tale to person who answers phone and FINALLY we have a new number that is truly ours. However this means we must now call to friends, family, schools, credit card companies, banks, utilities, etc….
Nope, not drinking the Private is automatically better Kool Aide again. I have sworn to vote against any candidate for public office who utters the line, “We need to run the government like a business.” Oh, hell no.
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Comments
Actually, Neil, living in a rural area, I don’t always have the option of shopping around for private enterprise either. The case of the phone company, I really had no other option. Those of us in the boonies don’t always have the choices those who live in more urban areas do. I accept this as a part of the price of seeing the stars at night, but sometimes it really bites!
You will get no argument from me on health care, though. I think our current systems of employer provided private care has been a miserable failure, and I say this as someone who does have good employer provided (though I pay part of it) health care. I harbor no illusions ,after watching the trial and travails of a coworker whose son had cancer, that my private health care will simply pony up should I or a member of my family become seriously ill.
No one in American really thinks that very sick people with no money should be completely left out.
Perhaps it's churlish or paranoid of me, but I think that there are such people, generally staunch minarchist libertarians, who think that the government should play any role at all in health care. Ron Paul isn't quite that, but I think he's representative. Here, from 2006, he outlines four bills he'd like Congress to pass. I'll summarize:
HR 3075: Tax credits for health insurance premiums.
HR 3076: Tax credits to bypass medical malpractice lawsuits.
HR 3077: Tax credits for child health care.
HR 3078: Suspension of Social Security taxation for the seriously ill.
It's not nothing in addressing health care issues, but it does focus most of the risk on individuals, which is a problem that socialization would at least try to address.
Likewise, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we have the disaster that followed the disaster. Those are two examples that come to mind right away, but there are many more stories out there, to be sure.
As for health care, I agree wholeheartedly with neilpaul.
Excellent examples, designanator. I actually could have written a much longer post than I did. I have noticed that recently the government functions I interact with have improved, while the private industries I frequent have gone completely in the other direction. I think that any organization the reaches a certain large size is going to have issues with efficiency and customer service, but I also think that when you throw in the profit motive, the bean counters have cut some businesses back to the point where they are incapable of serving their customers. I keep thinking of Ernestine, “Sir, you don’t understand, we’re THE PHONE COMPANY.” In other words, “We are big enough we don’t have to care”. Bill is right, customer service has gone the way of the dodo.
In private industry, I often waited on by worker bees who make minimum wage with no benefits. In government entities I am waited on by people who make a living wage and get to go the doctor when they get sick. The difference is beginning to show.