Service is Our Priority. Customers, Not So Much.

The Daily Caller, like any good wadi o'wingnuts, never misses an opportunity to compare the current congressional clusterf--- of a bill with what government health care looks like. Digging into the Daily Mail yields no information on the supposed 21 billion pounds sterling spent on "failed schemes to tackle inequality" but does yield that 487 million was spent on consultants.

That works out at more than £260,000 a day, including weekends. It is the equivalent of the annual salaries of around 17,000 nurses. . . . The winners are well-paid consultancy firms such as Accenture, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Deloitte, McKinsey and Ernst & Young. Individual consultants and accountants can earn up to £1,000 an hour. 

I honestly don't know if the spending on consultants is legit or not. Given that so much of public spending and public sector policy depends on politics, rather than efficiency, probably not.  But hiring consultants allows one to pretend that one is tackling systemic problems, and at the same time transfer blame for unpopular recommendations.

But no kabuki can mask the astonishing laziness of the public sector. This is not accidental. As I said, any public service industry is politically created, politically sustained, and hence politically motivated. The NHS does not need to satisfy customers. The NHS does not need to keep patients alive. All the NHS needs to do is keep its Parliamentary masters happy. It does so by employing the sorts of people that Parliament likes to see employed, so that these people can turn around and continue voting for the current Parliament. Services gained for Services rendered.

And if some folk don't get their drugs soon enough, well, they're another interest group to be satisfied. And whether they'll be alive to vote in the next elections are a bit iffy.