First, let me say that I'm not opposed to making health care
available to those who need it. Any
opposition I have is more related to two ideas: “The Mythical Man Month” and “The
Forgotten Man”.
The Mythical Man-Month
The Mythical Man-Month is a book written by Fred Brooks in 1975 about software engineering projects. It’s actually quite relevant to the “glitches” with the HealthCare.gov website for signing up for the Affordable Care act. This book introduces “Brook’s law”:
Adding more people to a late software project makes it later
The idea introduced yesterday that we are going to add the
best and brightest people to fix HealthCare.gov shows me the naivety of the
government regarding principles that have been known in the industry for 40
years. See my post “Why Can't Nine Women have a baby in one month?” for technical details.
The Forgotten Man
This is simply stated as “Person A sees a person B who is
suffering. Person A passes a law to help
person B. The law demands that person C
provides help to person B. Person A
claims credit for making things better.
Person B’s plight is lifted. But
person C, who works hard, pays their taxes, is a good neighbor, cares for their
family, etc. is never thought of – he is the forgotten man. (Sumner’s Forgotten
Man).
In conclusion, I see a government, in a genuine attempt to
help, take something complicated, make it more complicated and inefficient, and
then get innocent hard working people to pay for it. I hope I’m wrong.
Update:
Builders of Obama's health website saw red flags
Update:
Builders of Obama's health website saw red flags
1 comment:
The Forgotten Man was also the basis and title of a fairly recent, very good book about the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes; highly recommended. Ms. Shlaes has also just published a biography of Calvin Coolidge.
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