Clunkers in charge of health care? ~ By Doug Powers

By Doug Powers Posted: August 03, 2009 1:00 am Eastern © 2009 There's an old Chinese proverb that says, "Never let a man who chops down apple trees to get to the fruit perform your vasectomy." Well, maybe that's not an actual Chinese proverb, but it's certainly advice to keep in mind for anybody who's watching the government's handling of "Cash for Clunkers" while it's also attempting to seize complete control of health care. Cash for Clunkers – a program that our genius financial managers in Washington had skillfully budgeted to run, appropriately enough, until around Halloween – was suspended after just a few days because it ran out of money. The architects of Cash for Clunkers couldn't organize a two hybrid car funeral, but they continue to throw your money at their incompetence, because late last week the House approved $2 billion more so Cash for Clunkers can keep clunking along. But the item to focus on is the gross budget mismanagement from people who have as much experience running a business in the real world as my dog does at piloting F-16s. The Obama administration is attempting to use the fact that the program was popular with consumers as evidence that it was a "success," but it only serves as evidence of Obama administration and congressional incompetence. Unfortunately for Obama and company, many people are aware that sometimes "too successful" is far more expensive than "didn't work at all." If Apollo 11 had been "too successful" by the Obama administration's definition, the crew would have overshot the moon, and they'd be dead and halfway to Alpha Centauri by now. "That's one small loss of men, one giant leap for bureaucracy." In the private sector, when you create a sale or promotion of some sort, you must make sure you're covered in the event it's popular with consumers. Poor planning leads to unhappy customers, which culminates in going out of business. Fortunately for the government, they have no such consequence as "going out of business." In government, incompetence is rewarded. If it screws up, it simply takes more of your money to cover its mistakes. But people are catching on, and you're seeing that reflected in the poll numbers for government-run health care and even in Obama's falling approval ratings. [CONTINUE READING]