Another Argument for Government Not Running Your Healthcare Program

Original report can be found here.

LA Times bloggers Andrew Malcolm and Joanna Neuman reported today on that $5 billion in President Obama's stimulus money plan that was targeted to create 90,000 green-sector jobs and make 593,000 homes more energy efficient in the first year of implementation.

Well, it seems that like so many other government programs this one is falling a little short of it's goals. 98.5% short in fact. How about, only 9,000 homes so far?

Part of the problem is the rule of unintended consequences. The Pelosi-Reid stimulus plan includes an 80 year old legal provision requiring all federally funded programs to pay a prevailing wage to workers. The problem is...home weatherization under a "green-sector" industry niche hasn't really existed until now, so coming up with a "prevailing" wage for the over 3,000 counties in the U.S. has turned out to be a roadblock.

Free-market types would say: "Pay the workers what the market will bear." That's pretty easy, right? But apparently, the East Coast intellectual elite can't seem to accept that. There must be some "scientific" way to determine what the prevailing wage is.

Additionally, it looks like the National Trust for Historic Preservation must review most homes before contracts can be estimated or negotiated, with some states providing woefully adequate manpower for this task. Like Michigan, for example. With two, that's right, 2 people currently assigned to perform those reviews.

Finally, on the work done so far, $522 million has been spent on this program, improving 9100 homes. Let's do the math. Divide 9100 into 522,000,000, carry the one, and you get... $57,360 for every home fixed. Yup, that sounds like a government program to me.

Does any reasonable American tax-payer think that Obama, Pelosi and Reid can do a better job on managing national healthcare? My bet is ... not a chance.