Government as an ‘Efficient’ Alternative?

Reading a story like this, I'm reminded of how ironic it is that people seem to think the government can do things better than the free market.

Apparently, the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA for short) sent out a bunch of letters telling veterans they have ALS, a fatal disease with abnormally high occurrence among Gulf War veterans. At least a third of those who received letters don't actually have ALS.

The precise number of veterans who received the letter by mistake is unclear. The VA estimates around 600; the National Gulf War Resource Center puts the number at 1,200. According to this news story, the Resource Center "has received calls and e-mails from panicked veterans in Alabama, Florida, Kansas, North Carolina, West Virginia and Wyoming."

It seems frivolous to say how awful it would be to receive a letter from your health care provider saying you're probably going to die within five years, even if you are skeptical at first.

Moreover, this is coming from the VA – the department that gave $24 million in bonuses even as "hundreds of thousands of disability claims lay backlogged." Even more ironic is the fact that the bonuses mostly went to the technology employees – when the mistake ruining these veterans' week was a computer coding error.

I can never understand why we keep giving the government more power when we don't particularly like the way it runs anything.

I'm not saying that all government employees are jerks - I happen to know a couple I like very much - nor am I saying I particularly enjoy dealing with insurance companies. The point is that government programs never tire of giving us examples of bureaucratic inefficiency, and we seem never to tire of giving it more power.

Good parents teach their kids that, to get more privileges, they must first demonstrate responsibility. Like, "See if you can keep this potted plant alive, and then we'll talk about getting a dog."

When the kid repeatedly neglects the plants, are his parents going to feel comfortable getting him a dog? Further, if the kid already has an entire menagerie of pets that have grown fat and sickly, would they get him one then? Of course not.

That is what our government looks like. It's a complete mess! Although it's impossible to know exactly how much the government's inefficiency costs taxpayers, here is an interesting article claiming that a "real war on government waste could easily save over $100 billion annually without harming the legitimate operations and benefits of government programs."

Even if we are skeptical of that, consider the first item on the list, which is verifiable by the Treasury department itself: $24.5 billion in government transactions were unaccounted for in 2003, and this is not an isolated occurrence.

That means the federal government losses track of more money in a single day than most of us will earn our entire lives. If we go with the $100 billion estimate, which I think is probably reasonable, that means it wastes more in an hour than what most people earn in a lifetime.

Are we certain we're comfortable trusting the government with more of our money?