Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people":First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
So while CDC doubtless has many employees dedicated to controlling disease, the organization is run by people motivated by typical Washington politicking. That is a very plausible explanation of why CDC looks like it is trying to destroy the American health care system.Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
Consider:
- The CDC was the source of the estimates of Wuhan Flu death count (6.6M) that were used to shut down the American economy, and
- The CDC was the source of the rationale for the shutdown - slow the spread of the disease in order to reduce the maximum number of ICU patients to a level that would not cause the collapse of the health care system.
It looks like Mission Accomplished. Hospitals are empty, Hospital ships are leaving the ports they were to serve due to lack of patients, doctors and nurses are being laid off. The capacity of the health care system has clearly been preserved from the Wuhan virus.
But it has not been preserved from the CDC. Where are the recommendations from CDC to allow elective surgeries, reopening closed hospital wings and saving hospitals from bankruptcy? The World wonders. Hospitals from sea to sea are in precarious financial straits, due to the lockdown that was explicitly justified by CDC to prevent the same hospitals from collapsing.
But there's more, so much more. Consider:
- Most people in the United States get health insurance as a benefit from their employer.
- By the end of this week, probably 30M people will have been made unemployed due to CDC's recommended economic lockdown.
- The average number of people in the typical US household is 2.5. Taking an estimated 1.5 employed workers per household, this means that by Friday probably 50M people will lack health insurance.
But those 50M people will need health care. They just won't be able to pay for it. Hospitals must (by law) provide services anyway, and so hospitals that are already in financial trouble due to CDC's recommended lockdown will face a flood of additional non-paying patients.
Oops.
Now none of this is controversial, although no doubt CDC would engage in a lot of ass covering to try to cover up all their past fear mongering. The implications are inescapable - the cure for American healthcare is worse than the disease. CDC is burning the village in order to save it.
 |
| Relax, we're doctors ... |
6 comments:
Our healthcare systems are dead men walking. Their fate was sealed the second that neoliberals decided that healthcare is a right. The second mortal blow came when they decided to open the floodgates of immigrant 3rd world human trash... and let them take full advantage of healthcare systems they didn’t pay a cent in to.
Why even have a CDC unless you are going to enforce your borders? We deserve all that’s coming and more because we are letting them do this to us.
It's a great way to get the single payer -government - health care the left always wanted. Congradulations the Obama and the left for a great victory.
Cloward-Piven. At least incrementally (in the case of health care infrastructure).
It is often hard to distinguish between Malice and incompetence when it comes to government workers.
In this case, however, I would point towards malice.
Excellent article.
The nature of bureaucracy is inherently incompetent. There is only one incentive: to maintain or increase their budget. To not do so results in the death of the bureaucracy, as it's lack of usefulness would become instantly apparent.
I have relatives in government. Their primary mission is not to do the things the department is tasked to do, but to maximize their budget expenditures before the end of the fiscal year so that their budget for next year remains the same or more. They will literally spend millions of tax dollars on useless shit just to keep their jobs. The initial mission of that bureaucracy is no longer relevant. Indeed, most bureaucrats have a hard time telling us just what that mission is.
I hope we reach a point in my lifetime where the money really does run out, so we can kick these useless agencies to the curb.
We no longer have a need for many fed agencies, their goals were achieved decades ago and they should be disolved. The CDC is a prime example. Others include the two DOE's, energy and education, BATFE, and the FDA, to name just a few.
No fan of CDC and I concur with the proposal to abolish them. In fact, you missed one of the worst cases of CDC screwup/sabotage which is monopolizing testing and then producing faulty test kits.
But do you have a link for the 6.6M projection. I was unable to find anything like that, not only from the CDC but anywhere. Also, many of the unemployed could continue their health insurance under the provisions of COBRA. They would have to pay for it but that is easy enough to fix with a bailout bill. In fact, it may have already been done.
Ah, I see you covered the test kits in the previous post.
Post a Comment