I used to think the best example of schizophrenic public policy is North Carolina’s silly approach to gambling . The view seems to be that a state-run lottery is good and a way to help the children, yet privately-run gambling is bad and should be prevented from setting up shop. But as of today, I have replaced gambling as my favorite incoherent policy prescription with liberals’ arguments about privatization. As John Hood points out today, liberals continually squawk about privatization efforts by the Big Bad Conservatives in the General Assembly. Problem is, you can drive a truck through the flaw in their argument.
The model of “public dollars + private providers = public service” isn’t even foreign to North Carolina education. We’ve been doing this for decades in higher education, day care, and early childhood programs. For example, the North Carolina Pre-K program (what used to be called More at Four) pays public schools, religious institutions, and for-profit centers to deliver the same set of services to at-risk preschoolers. Liberals love this program and wish to expand it. But once those four-year-olds turn five, a “successful public-private partnership” becomes a “dangerous privatization” in the liberal mind.
The incoherence about privatization extends beyond this case, however. With regard to Medicaid, North Carolina already contracts with a private vendor to coordinate the care of most Medicaid recipients. This contract wasn’t awarded by competitive bidding or consumer choice. And it allows the private vendor to make money from administering Medicaid dollars without facing any financial risk should the cost exceed projections.
If the state had negotiated such a no-bid contract to deliver any other public service — public safety, road maintenance, information technology, you name it — the Left would properly cry foul and demand a better process. But the private contractor I’m talking about, Community Care of North Carolina, receives nothing but praise from left-wing analysts who simultaneously attack Gov. Pat McCrory’s proposal to invite competitive bids for multiple Medicaid contractors. They dismiss his Partnership for a Healthy North Carolina as “privatization” while defending Medicaid’s current privatized arrangement.
