0716 - BureauWater

Readers, today The OO analyzes the constant fight between those who declare that Government is bad and private business is good, and those who declare that business is greedy and only benevolent public efforts can provide what we need. Not to spoil the tension, but the truth is that both public and private organizations suffer from the same diseases of bureaucracy. Large or small, public or private, the same bureaucratic diseases infect any organization that is poorly run. This is true in the U.S., on Anguilla, in Europe, and indeed everywhere. The key problem in any organization is that the workers see their own assignments as the purpose of their work, and do not see their task as carrying out the purpose of the organization, be it company, department, or indeed even a do-good no-profit.

We start with the much debated issue whether medical care and drugs should be provided by the Government (“Socialized Medicine”!) or by private profit-makers (“Greedy Profiteers”!). Take a small example from Anguilla. Go to the Hospital Pharmacy here, stand in line – of course – and hand in your ‘script. Pleasant pharmacists will fill your order IF the drug is in stock (if it is not they will not order it, the list of what is available will not be expanded for you). Then, you do not pay and leave; instead you are given a small hand-written slip of paper with a price on it. You must then go to a small closed room where only one supplicant at a time may enter and seek to talk though a small glassed window with a speech-hole, located two feet off the ground. There, you pay, yell your name though the speech hole, and two hand–written receipts are written. You then take one receipt, wait in line, and get the pills. That is, you take the receipt after an hour and fifteen minute wait in line to get into the tiny pay office (that was the wait last week; The OO was 15th in line). The bill is small indeed: drugs are quite cheap, score one for Government. The wait is intolerable; the procedure is antique and ridiculous. Score zero.

Then, compare the all-private uninsured procedure: the drugs can be hugely expensive, the wait is minimal, any drug you need is available. In the U.S., there is in place an enormously complex public (Medicare) drug program, plus private Medicare Supplement programs, often sold by non-profits (AARP) but then assigned to profit-making organizers and filled at commercial pharmacies. This public/private mix is administratively wasteful, and expensive, but it is now chugging along if you can afford it.

The same problems are seen in the Iraq fiasco. The Government runs the invading army, of course, and the U.S. Embassy bureaucracy. Or does it? It seems that huge segments of the effort are contracted out to private contractors, from beefing up electricity and water (a failure) up to the duty of providing private paid armies of guards –the Blackwater and similar mercenaries. Well, the contractors seem to be wasting money and moving in circles, according to all reports. Does it make sense to think that hiring several bands of shoot-em-ups to protect the diplomats and the contractors will work well? No. Is there anyone managing the reconstruction or non-reconstruction? No. The question, public, private, non-profit, or the typical U.S. big messy mix of all together, is are there competent executives controlling what’s being done? Sadly, there aren’t.

Readers, Readers, Politicians, Parties, listen up. Every large organization, public or private, will only work if it has competent supervisors at the top. The people working in any big organization are only interested in doing what they see as their task – put out today’s paperwork. Those running things must be competent, with an eye to the purpose of the effort. Sorry, it isn’t so.

Next time: Return [OO #717]

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