Jeannie-ology

There are Americans in this country perfectly comfortable with handing over their health care to the government. Somehow they don’t have a problem with bureaucrats making life and death decisions and government, “Sorry, I’m on my break,” civil servants doing their kidney biopsies.

True believers are convinced that this is America and in America things won’t be like Europe, Canada and Michael Moore’s favorite health care panacea, Cuba. Americans will have an efficient, high performing, state-of-the-art health care system and the epitome of efficiency, a bankrupt United States government will finance the endeavor with full faith, financial abandon and total commitment.

There are many examples of government inefficiency that can be linked directly to health care and how it is likely to be run. One glowing example of how the government operates is the unending habit of sending checks to dead tax payers. It seems that the Internal Revenue Service, one of government’s shining stars, hunts down money from living, breathing human beings and sends the proceeds to the deceased. Another example of competence, accuracy and a dedication to high standards of excellence. This is cause for concern especially if government plans to run health care. If the bureaucracy can mistake dead people for living, there is a good chance they can mistake living people for dead, which could pose a problem.

Rose Hagner died, not last year, not even five years ago but has been room temperature for 40 years. Yes, Rose went home to the Lord on Memorial Day in 1967, which explains a lot. The IRS is closed on Memorial Day and could be a valid excuse as to why, after four decades, they were still unaware she had departed, so the late Rosie received a long overdue $250.00 check. James Hagner, Rose’s 83-year old son said he’d like to frame it and hang it on his wall. “I just want to keep it as a souvenir, that’s all. I’ll never cash it.” Hand it over Jimmy Boy, there will be none of that…that check is someone elses’ “piece of the pie.”

According to Social Security representatives, out of 52 million stimulus checks sent out, 10,000 have been sent to dead people. Now if you do the math for 13 paid government holidays that is about 770 dead people per holiday who were never recorded as having passed on. If everyone of them got a $250.00 check, that only comes to $2,500,000.00, which is chump change and wouldn’t have even paid for appetizers at Obama’s inauguration party.

Now for those eager to hand over their exploratory surgery to the government, their explanation for the mistake may make you feel more relaxed. They say the error is because of efficiency deadlines, which made them have to forfeit accuracy. According to representatives, “…strict mid-June deadline of mailing out all of the checks, which didn’t leave officials much time to clean up all of their records.” For forty years? That is a heck of a lot of break time for the them there civil servants. Health care proponents just better hope that rationing of the operating rooms doesn’t force the surgeons to skip painting their chest with Betadine before open heart surgery due to time constraints.

The Internal Revenue’s explanation isn’t one that brings comfort to the wary. Apparently, this isn’t the first year that checks have been sent to the dead, which means they never have time to clean up their records. In December of 2008, the U.S. Treasury was issuing economic stimulus checks to dead people too. In fact the checks actually had the words “deceased” printed on them next to the name. “The first line of the check listed “Donabea M. Baker Dec’d” as in deceased.” One never knows, the government may have had a money saving plan in issuing checks to the dead, which worked to benefit some economic initiative. The trustee of Donabea’s estate, whose name was also on the check, said, “I don’t know what they are thinking?” Which may be the question we’ll all be asking a few years into the government running nationalized health care.

In 2008, when Congress passed the $168 billion economic stimulus package, it was to stimulate the economy. If a person died after filing their 2007 tax return, the IRS still sent them a stimulus check. I guess the government has faith in their ability to stimulate and believe that they literally can rouse things that have no hope of coming back to life. When IRS spokesman Mike “I’m a genius” Dobzinski was told, “But those dead taxpayers couldn’t stimulate the economy, could they?” His response was “That’s not our decision to make!” Can anyone say hysterectomy, prostatectomy, emergency by-pass?”

Even Paul Caron, esteemed professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Law was perplexed when he received a $600.00 stimulus check for his late father. Scratching his head the guy with all the answers had to ask, “What is the purpose for making stimulus payments to dead people?” Professor Paul, haven’t you heard? Obama plans on “breathing new life into the economy,” and then “resting on the seventh day.”

According to Mr. “I’m a spokesperson for the IRS” Dobzinski, the agency doesn’t keep data records on how many dead people get paid.  However,they do know how many checks are sent and how many people who file taxes die in any given year, after that they lose track. “I know I just saw that scalpel before sewing Charlie up.”

So they are statistical experts! They just don’t know how many checks with “deceased” printed on them go out every year to people who are “deceased.” That could be because EEOC compels them to hire visually impaired operators to run the printing presses in the Federal Reserve. Think about it, these are the people who are going to be saying, “Slide down to the end of the table, this won’t hurt a bit!”

Any clear thinking logical person would have to connect the dots here and say, “Maybe these aren’t the individuals I want deciding who lives and who dies,” especially because they can’t tell the difference between the two. But no…Obama cheerleaders want us all to be heralding the birth of the Obama Health Care initiative. Just as his $800 billion dollar stimulus package holds the promise of resurrecting a dead economy, so too does the Obama Lazarus effect hold new life for health care. The promise of rolling the stone away from the grave of high costs, greedy insurance companies, overpaid doctors and pharmaceutical companies, even has mutes screaming “Yes, we can!” Unfortunately, in this case while dead people won’t get checks…there is a good chance live people, being cared for by Dr. Dobzinski, will be forced to check out.

For those who trust the government with their health care decisions rationalizing sending checks to dead people is really not a big deal. Out of 52 million checks issued, only 10,000 dead people got a check, which is only 0.02%. However, 0.02% of 303,824,640 living, American human beings comes to about 60,000 potential errors that cannot be undone, sent back or framed and hung up as a souvenir. People becoming dead when they are alive at the hands of incompetent government policies, procedures and workers is a reality that cannot be overlooked when considering obvious and unrelenting inefficiencies, errors, mediocrity and substandard government service.

Taking a tough stand, Social Security officials are confident the money will find its way back home, reminding the public that it’s a federal offense to cash in another person’s government issued check. Government officials will enforce the law regardless, even if Obama Health Care is responsible for killing Granny a government official will be on hand to remind the survivors that it is still a misdemeanor to bury her in the back yard!

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