Think back to the last few times that you visited the U.S. post office. It's a rare day that you don't have to wait there in an incredibly slow moving line to pick-up or mail something. Why is that? They are doing something that happens over and over again, yet the customer service process moves at a crawl.
The transactions are fairly simple and predictable. Determine where it's going, measure & weigh it maybe, determine the price, get the correct payment, accept the package and mark it. Done. For a package pick-up, review a claim check notice, confirm their identity, fetch the package from the back area, get a signature, and it's done.
Why does it take so long? Because the post office is not a service organization. It's a government office, and in case you haven't noticed, ALL GOVERNMENT OFFICES PERFORM THE SAME WAY. The processes remain the same over decades even though technology has evolved that could greatly reduce the waiting. I have a half dozen ideas with only a minute's thought, but I won't digress. The employees move like zombies because true advancement and competition are not factors in government organizations. You have to wait, and they don't care. They get paid the same either way.
Now consider that the same factors that keep post office, car registration and drivers license lines long and slow will be applicable to the health care system if Showbama gets his way. Ever wait to see a doctor? Of course you have, but you haven't seen anything yet. When the government zombies and bureaucrats are running things, medical care will require appointments to be scheduled several months in advance only to wait a half a day in the lobby when your care day arrives. Many of the doctors' decisions will have to be reviewed and approved before actual procedures, prescriptions or therapy begins. The review is not to ensure that your care is adequate. It is to ensure that your prescribed care aligns with fiscal policy.
When you are delayed mailing something or getting a license, it is just an annoying inconvenience. When you are waiting on medical care, you will be suffering from symptoms, often involving discomfort, pain and/or debilitation. It is a fact that conditions and injuries often worsen without timely treatment. If it's contagious, metastic or malignant, it will have more time to spread.
The bureaucrats will decide that too much money is being spent on doctors salaries and will regulate them. This will greatly reduce the number of Americans willing to undergo the years of intensive studies, training and costs to become physicians. Less physicians means more waiting. To address the void of physicians, there will be substitution using people that are less educated, less motivated and more specialized.
Less education and motivation obviously does not translate to better medical care. Specialization may sound good at first, but the process that it will take to get a patient to the correct (hopefully) specialist could literally take years when the government is handling it. The specialists will have little motivation to be superior since reward and advancement are not readily available in government organizations. Excellence requires effort, and effort requires motivation.
Another method of addressing the void will be limiting care consent and options (already allowed in the proposed legislation). The rich will bribe their way and go to other countries for decent care, but what will the rest of us do? When they start closing medical centers as with the post offices now, where will we go?
Be nice.
