It?s become trite to compare government-run health care with inefficient government bureaucracies like the post office, simply because that comparison has been made so often (now even by our president himself).
But a recent editorial in the Greensboro News & Record got me to thinking about that again.
As a reporter, I?m all too familiar with the bureaucratic red tape in government agencies. More often than not, one hand doesn?t know what the other is doing. The more local a government body is, the easier it is, generally, to extract information (unless the employee in question is completely clueless as to the law).
When you?re dealing with a federal body, such as the EPA or Housing and Urban Development, forget about a timely response, if you get a response at all.
So, that brings me to the latest example of government inefficiency. The Greensboro N&R has this report on HUD banning residents of a retirement community in High Point from holding religious services in public places. The reason? The retirement home, Elm Towers, gets HUD funds.
The N&R is asking for clarification from HUD?s regional office in Atlanta about whether that?s legal. No response so far. One of the newspaper’s editors writes a blog post about that here.
We’ve been trying to get an opinion from HUD for the past week.
The last communication I received was an email Wednesday from a spokesman at HUD’s regional office in Atlanta, which said:
?We are working with our Regional Office of General Counsel and they are working with their counterpart The Office General Counsel in the HUD main office in DC. This will take time.?
So HUD doesn’t know what its policy is.
Actually, the answer, probably, is an unequivocal ?yes? to that last statement.
It?s worthwhile to consider ? do you want your request for a new kidney snarled up because some bureaucrat has to go through seven layers of brass to discover whether that?s ?in the policy??
I?m just saying.
