Some officials in the federal government do not understand why Americans doubt Washington’s ability to run our medical system through ObamaCare socialized medicine.
But the real question is, why would anybody think the costly, inefficient federal government is capable of running a massive health care system that represents roughly one-sixth of our entire economy?
Existing federal entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare are already headed for bankruptcy unless major reforms are enacted soon. And the true costs of those programs have been far higher than the original estimates. Why would that inspire confidence that big new federal involvement in medical care will improve the system?
And it’s not only the huge, complex programs that the federal government manages so poorly.
Recently, it was shown that the U.S. Department of Energy has wasted millions of dollars by not following the energy-efficiency advice it gives to the American people.
For example, the department’s website strongly urges Americans to change out their old fluorescent light bulbs and install much more efficient, technologically advanced bulbs. And yet, an internal audit showed that hardly any of the Energy Department’s own offices have switched to the very bulbs that the agency has spent millions of dollars promoting to the general public.
Here is an even more absurd example. Back in 1997, the department installed timers that would shut off lights in its new building when no one was there at night. But nobody bothered to install the central control unit that would actually run the system, and so 13 years later, the agency has not gotten any cost savings from the timers.
“We can acknowledge there’s more work that needs to be done,” a department spokeswoman told The New York Times.
That’s true, but again, how can we trust the federal government with gigantic programs such as health care when it cannot follow its own recommendations on something as simple as energy-efficient light bulbs?