The DMV and Health care

You might be wondering what can the DMV and Health care possibly have in common. Up until a few months ago not much. But as the "reforms" come into play that the government has passed we will begin to see more and more similarities.

I was recently down at the DMV in Waterloo, IA, testing for my CDL. The office opened at 8:30am. I arrived about 8:40pm and there was a line out into the hall. Looked bad except when you looked into the office there where hardly any people inside everyone was out in the hall. Part of the hold up is that they were only taking the scheduled motorcycle testers first. Once those people were taken care of the line moved pretty quickly and I got my number. Yes that's right you have to stand in line to get a number to be in line. Those of you familiar with large city DMV's understand this, it is standard practice at the DMV to stand in line to get a place in line. In case you have forgotten the DMV is run by the govenrment. Same people some are calmoring for to fix health care.

Anyway after standing in line I got my number and after about 10 or 15 minutes I was called to the counter. Took my eye test again. And then got set up to take my Pre-trip test, skills test and driving test. By this time it was around 9:00am. Finaly the lady helping me said ok we have you down for 11:00 but they could get done with the others early so you should be back by 10:00am. There was 3 people in front of me.

So I proceed to sit down and wait while I'm sitting there I decide to count the number of people waiting to be helped. There were 8 of us 3 CDL's plus myself and then 4 others. Not counting the half dozen or so that were outside taking their motorcycle tests.

I then counted the employees. There where 15 employees inside not counting the ones that were testing the motorcycles and the one CDL that was out testing at the moment. Of those 15 employees at 9:30am at any given moment 14 of them were not doing a thing. Each employee had a little station and that was there area they couldn't do anything else. I got out of the testing station at 12:45pm. I was there for over 4 hours.

Why was I there so long? There were plenty of employees but apparantly only a few employees who could help me. The DMV could improve effeciancy a 100 fold if all the employees could do all the jobs. But why should they? I will not go elsewhere because there is no elsewhere, there is no competition for the DMV so there is no incentive for them to change.

What is even more ironic is that they have a little survey card for you to fill out about your experience with the DMV.

What does this have to do with health care you wonder. The govenrment is full of burecrats that have no incentavives to do well, to be efficient, visit any DMV in any major city and you will understand. We are going to allow the same people who have given us the absurdity of the DMV, to "fix" our health care system. Anybody who believes that these new reforms will be better has never dealt with the DMV.