Truck and Barter: More of This? No, thanks.

April 28, 2005

More of This? No, thanks.

By Ian

Instapundit has a link to an "amazing" story about the IRS:

"In a program intended for employee development, administrative costs exceeded tuition paid by almost two to one," said Max Baucus (Mont.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees the IRS. "As Congress considers the IRS budget for the upcoming year, we must be confident that the IRS is using its money responsibly."

(I say "amazing", since I don't find this kind of waste out of line with my expectations, but simply fascinating in the numerous and varied ways that the government can find to make a mess of even basic functions.)

An internal employee program of the IRS spent 60% of its funding on administering the program, turning away people seeking to use the benefit because of a lack of funds. Of course, these benefits are often considered part of an employees's overal compensation package -- something they consider having when weighing the value of a federal job versus, possibly, the private sector.

This should be a reminder for those who suggest that the key to fixing efficiency problems in the private sector is...more government.

The fact is that in health care, the private sector is often bloated and bureaucratic, while some government agencies - notably the Veterans Administration system - are lean and efficient.

I think it wouldn't be a stretch to believe that the efficiency of a governmental organization decreases as the number of people it is required to serve increases. In fact, I might suggest that this is one of the reasons that the VA can be considered "efficient' (relatively speaking). What I find more interesting, however, is that the VA is the third largest civilian consumer of energy in the federal government. They are behind the USPS, which delivers mail to everyone (ostensibly) in the US, and the DOE, which is the central agency for energy matters and thus concerns everyone again. The VA used 48.6 billion Btus compared with the USPS's 78.5 billion in 2002; this loosely compares the hospitals caring for those who fall under the VA's purview versus delivery vehicles to get mail across the 50 states . How would that ratio change if the VA suddenly had the role of administrating the health care for everyone in the US? Or even if their current number tripled?

The fact is that in health care, to avoid the loss of clients fed up with bad service, the private sector would have motivations to monitor its effciency, even if it wasn't perfect at it, while no government agency -- saddled with the potential care of every person in the US -- would have any reason to count "efficiency" among its primary concerns.

Posted at April 28, 2005 10:19 AM

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