As millions of people seek government aid, many for the first time, they are finding it dispensed American style: through a jumble of disconnected programs that reach some and reject others, often for reasons of geography or chance rather than differences in need.
Health care, housing, food stamps and cash ”” each forms a separate bureaucratic world, and their dictates often collide. State differences make the patchwork more pronounced, and random foibles can intervene, like a computer debacle in Colorado that made it harder to get food stamps and Medicaid.
The result is a hit-or-miss system of relief, never designed to grapple with the pain of a recession so sudden and deep. Aid seekers often find the rules opaque and arbitrary. And officials often struggle to make policy through a system so complex and Balkanized.
Across the country, hard luck is colliding with fine print.
The common theme, as with almost all of FDR’s relief programs, is that the bulk of money is going to places where it will help consolidate the Democrat vote … [i]not[/i] where it is needed most.
The results are consequently quite unsurprising. Compare [url=http://michaelscomments.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/the-april-numbers-are-in-its-official/] Obama’s official promises, versus reality.[/url] So far the only thing accomplished is to funnel trillions of our future profits to Obama’s current allies. Unemployed? Oh, yeah. Thanks for letting me use you as a poster child.
This is why I am a bit skeptical of socialized healthcare. Some people think these same bureaucrats and system are going to have the wherewithal to fix the healthcare system without making it more complicated and arbitrary that it already is? I remain skeptical.