Profit and Loss

Being asked what you could do less of is an invitation to a rant. It’s the sort of thing made for a slow news cycle when nothing else is there to fill the airwaves, expend newsprint on, or appear in your spam folder. It’s the sort of stuff that, on the coast, the old maiden aunts would gather to gossip over while having tea. Years later, you look at it and say that it should have been kept in the dark and out of the sunlight.
That isn’t the case with the recent interest in making government run like a business.

Now, before you get all revved up about operational efficiencies and the like, start by considering that, by and large, governments and not-for-profit organizations do what for-profit businesses don’t want to or can’t do well. When they try, we often wind up with messes. Messes like we’ve recently had with Steward Health Care. Hospitals have closed, Operating Rooms are without supplies, exorbitant Executive suite compensations, and yachts galore for the bosses.
If you’ve read some of my posts, you may be aware that I have a business as a woodcarver. Over the years, I’ve carved a wide variety of products looking for the products that sell. My shelves at home are loaded with nice stuff that I developed that didn’t sell well. Being that I was in business to make money, some things were dropped from my product line for not selling. Most often, I couldn’t sell at a price that yielded a profit, or the demand was less than expected. You can’t bank appreciative comments such as, ” You do such lovely work!” when sales do not back it up.

As a small businessman, I have to maintain cash flow and do my best to make a profit. In government, it’s more complex. There are things we are called upon to provide that the “rational” decisions you’d make for a business don’t apply. Of course, we could run a medical system where those who can’t afford coverage just do without. We can’t make a profit by providing these services. OK, let’s deny or delay coverage. Eventually, the client will become so frustrated they’ll choke up ( maybe literally) the money and go away. Wait, that’s what United Healthcare did. How has that worked out for them?

United Healthcare recently lost its CEO to assassination. Instead of outpourings of anger at the murder, there were outpourings of snark, sarcasm, and images of the assassin as a sort of folk hero. Their corporation has become infamous for using the terms delay, deny, and depose with regard to claims.
You could run a government agency like United Healthcare or Steward Health Care. But you would not be very effective at providing the services required.

In writing about running government more like a business, I’ve used privatized healthcare as an example. It’s attracted lots of public attention this past year. It’s easy for you to research. And it’s fair to say that it offers a model of what government agencies run as businesses might look at. You can’t slap a smile on this picture and happily view it through the glaze of massaged publicity.

If you think running government like a business might be a good idea, do a bit of research on the examples I’ve provided. You might want to think again. For-profit corporations are not even doing a good job of delivering the goods and services they contract for as for-profit entities. Are you ready to trust them to do a good job of running your government? Be prepared for more “efficiency”, but fewer services.