The GAO or Government Accountability Office has found tons of overlapping and duplicative programs at the federal level. All this is costing taxpayers billions of dollars. The bloat is in all departments and this is just typical of a government that keeps rewarding itself with more and more jobs with no one to stop it. Maybe this time there will be some thinning out of this waste but I wouldn't hold my breath. Every time there is a new fad or philosophy there is a build up of new programs to install and enforce the new rules they make up. I bring this up in relation to the healthcare system. The article in the WSJ doesn't dig too deeply in this area yet, but I am sure we will hear from them in the future. As you know, I am a big skeptic of "pay for performance" programs which is another name for "physician profiling". The term they use (they being the government, the managed care companies, the hospital administrators, etc.) to soften it up is called Quality. Please refer to the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance if you want to properly define and then redefine quality. Anyway, at this time, they aren't listing how many government programs are watching over "quality" for the health care system. It's early. Like a spreading cancer, it grows silently until it is too big to stop. All without any evidence supporting its use. Don't believe me? The GAO found 82 federal programs to improve teacher quality! How is that working out for you?
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