Impulse

The Economist has an inter­est­ing brief arti­cle on why gov­ern­ment use of the web has been inef­fec­tive while in the pri­vate sec­tor, the web has been a pri­mary dri­ving force in the econ­omy.  This got me think­ing about what would hap­pen if we really did have uni­ver­sal healthcare.

The econ­o­mist points out that because there is no com­pe­ti­tion in gov­ern­ment — you get only one per coun­try — there’s no com­pe­ti­tion or drive to make things effi­cient.  “Failure in bureau­cracy means not bank­ruptcy but writ­ing self-justifying memos, and at worst a trans­fer else­where. Bureaucrats plead that just a bit more time and money will fix the clunky mon­sters they have created.” 

Further, imple­ment­ing effi­cient online ser­vices often require a dif­fer­ent per­son­al­ity than is often found in bureau­cra­cies: “The exam­ples of good e-government in our spe­cial report have a com­mon fac­tor: a tough-minded leader at the top, will­ing to push change through against the protests of cor­rupt or incom­pe­tent vested interests.”

So what hap­pens if we have uni­ver­sal health care?   The health care & insur­ance indus­try is already hor­ri­bly laden with paper­work and bureau­cracy.  It’s ripe for online & elec­tronic effi­cien­cies.  But, if you elim­i­nate the already slim com­pe­ti­tion, and encour­age more bureau­cratic per­son­al­i­ties to have power, will it just get worse?  Will med­ical costs (which every­one would bear) actu­ally go up because of sys­tem & infor­ma­tion inefficiencies?  

Related posts:

1. Flagrant dis­re­gard for human life