| This is a topic with which I know we are all familiar. I'm sure most of us have dealt with absurd errors that are somehow automatically made by mindless drones in civil service and large private organizations or by the equally mindless computers that have replaced them in recent years. I have a story of my own to tell, and I would like to use it as a springboard for some general discussion on this persistent problem. I decided to post it here rather than in the casual discussion forum because it would likely just become a boring listing thread there. In the United States, health care is very convoluted. Last year, I purchased a health plan through Covered California, which is the ObamaCare exchange for the state. Everything worked fine. So I went to renew the plan for this year. I signed up and made the first month's payment, and I thought that would be the end of it, but things went wrong in a rather absurd fashion. First, I got two conflicting letters from Covered California - one indicating that my enrollment was successful, and another indicating that my enrollment was denied because I am not a member of the primary tax filer's household (which makes no sense, since I am a member of my own household, and I am the only person living here). Here, it seems like my situation split into two exclusive paths. I will call the former Path 1, and the latter Path 2. I have concluded that the system has come to believe that I am two different people, each one with exactly the same name, address, and ID number. In Path 1, I recently got word from Covered California and from the health plan that my payment for January had not been received even though I dutifully sent the payment many days early, and it has shown up in my bank account. In Path 2, somehow the county health authority decided to sign me up for MediCal, the government health plan for the indigent. I make far too much money to qualify, and I told them so, but their process continues to lumber on at a snail's pace as if they had never heard from me. Also, I believe my January payment got applied to Path 2, but since it was denied, I should receive a refund, but I haven't seen anything yet. Since the two paths seem to be exclusive, and the system thinks that I am two different people, the payment hasn't been credited to Path 1. This is where the situation stands now. I'm sure it will be loads of fun disentangling it, especially since I potentially have to deal with three inefficient bureaucratic organizations - the county government, the state government, AND a private insurance company. I'm not looking for advice on how to solve this - when something this screwy happens, no advice can possibly be helpful. I'll just have to fight the system until it is fixed, however long that may take. I'm sure some sort of computer screw-up caused this, but in years past, the exact same mistake would have been made by a dimwitted civil servant, the sort of person referred to by the British as a bowler-hatted twit, or possibly by an equally dimwitted bureaucrat at the insurance company. (In this case, I believe the problem originates with the Covered California website.) This brings up one question. Since computers are supposed to be so reliable, why do these things keep happening? If anything, it seems like the situation is worse now than it used to be. (I have my own ideas, but I'm curious about what others have to say.) And another general point that this brings up. What are the costs, both economic and social, of this bowler-hatted twittery and its computerized equivalent? These sorts of absurd problems must eat up loads of money and time. Finally, is there anything that we can do about it? The cynic in me believes that this problem can never be solved, but maybe somebody has a brilliant solution. In addition to these general points, I would be curious to hear of other people's experiences with bureaucratic bungles. |
| It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue. |
| I agree that human error is the usual problem; I was curious to see what other people would have to say about this. It turns out that my initial conclusion wasn't quite right. Somehow, the Covered California system had concluded (likely due to poor design) that I had no income and was therefore eligible for Medi-Cal. So Medi-Cal was able to take over my account without my permission, and it canceled the insurance I had chosen. Since my income is too high to qualify for Medi-Cal, or even for premium assistance, this was ridiculous. Unfortunately, Medi-Cal was able to lock up my account, and Covered California couldn't kick them out of it. It took weeks for me to convince Medi-Cal to get out of my account, mainly because it is practically impossible to get them on the phone, and they ignore letters and e-mails. It was finally resolved; I got them out of the account, and the good people at Covered California were able to retroactively fix the problem. It was finally fixed, once and for all, this morning. This leads me to a rather unfortunate conclusion. Government programs for the poor are very likely to be difficult to deal with because the poor are not a politically powerful constituency. Medi-Cal serves the poor, and it is administered by understaffed, overworked, and incompetent county health agencies. Dealing with them is a nightmare. From my recent experiences, I hope I never need Medi-Cal, and I certainly hope I never again have reason to deal with the San Diego County Health and Human Services agency. Covered California, on the other hand, serves people at all income levels, and even rich people can acquire health insurance on the exchange. Since this service is available to a broader population, including people with the ability to make trouble if things go wrong, it works a lot better. The people who work for the program are responsive, and one doesn't have to wait on the phone for an hour or more to talk to somebody. Once I was able to get Medi-Cal out of the system, the people at Covered California were able to fix the problem in an instant. The only problem here is that some bowler-hatted twit made the decision to allow Medi-Cal to lock up people's accounts. Whoever made that decision should be sent to the glue factory. Cottonrabbit - It sounds like Australia can be a huge pain as well, but it just has a different set of problems. In the United States, we don't have compulsory voting, so we often have low turnout elections that are dominated by extremists, and we end up being governed by lunatics. But if we had compulsory voting, I'm sure the sort of trouble you describe would occur here on a massive scale. Incidentally, those who love to hear satirical stories of bowler-hatted twittery should check out these two radio and television series. Men from the Ministry - a BBC radio series that ran from 1962-1977, starring two incompetent but lovable civil servants who can't do anything right. It is one of my favorite sitcoms. A bit of effort with a search engine should quickly turn up many episodes of this series. Yes, Minister (and its sequel, Yes Prime Minister) - a BBC television and radio series that ran from 1980-1988. It explores the conflict between elected officials and an entrenched, bureaucratic civil service. So does anybody else here have any great example of bowler-hatted twittery? It seems that it would be difficult to do worse than the ones we've seen so far in this thread. |
| It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue. |
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