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To me, there is nothing worse than a lame excuse. When you’ve been caught red-handed, have some
dignity, man up, and admit that you screwed up.
When the whole world knows you’ve made a mess of things, it’s better to
own your mistakes rather than to continue to try to justify your misdeeds. I think that, like most people, I came to
this realization dome time prior to my fifth birthday. Unfortunately, some people have never learned
this lesson
I think that the world heard the lamest excuse ever at the
Nuremberg trials after the Second World War.
Nazi War Criminals, when identified as the perpetrators of genocide, and
of being the most despicable people on the face of the earth, often quoted the
mantra that “we were just following orders”.
Hanging was too good for these sub-human scum.
The second lamest excuse is only slightly better. It’s basically just the civilian version of
the ‘just following orders’ excuse. Time
and time again, we here of people who royally screwed the pooch explain that they were “just doing our job”.
This often escalates into even greater lameness when someone
self appoints themselves to a job, fouls it up, and then tries to explain away
their sub-par performance.
A prime example of this were the Windshield Swipers of
Manhattan. Those of you who lived around
Manhattan may recall the windshield swipers
– homeless people who would spring on your car as soon as it was stopped at a
light and then proceed – without invitation – to wipe your windshield with a
dirty rag. I can’t recall at time when
my windshield was ever left cleaner after being the unwilling recipient of
their ‘cleaning’ services. Even though I
never asked them to clean my windshield – and even though they always did a
horrible job – they would also get belligerent or even violent if you didn’t
pay them for their ‘service’
Thank goodness that Mayor
Rudy Giuliani put an end to these
leeches when he took office in the
mid-eighties. Manhattan is now a much
nicer place to visit by car.
Of course, they windshield
swipers didn’t go away without a fight – they claimed that they were (you
guessed it) “ just doing their job “ .
While not readily apparent
to most of us, we have a version of ‘Windshield Swipers’ in our healthcare
system – and they are infinitely more intrusive, costly, and devastating to our
economy and well being than a squeegee carrying Manhattanite could
ever be. In fact, their uninvited
‘squeegeeing is ruining our healthcare system.
I am referring, of course,
to our health insurance carriers.
Let’s put things in
perspective. Our health insurance
carriers have injected themselves into our lives like a sterno bum at the exit of
the Lincoln Tunnel. They exact a 25-30%
premium from us for their uninvited services, extorting hundreds of dollars
every month from most Americans. They
greatly increase administrative overhead.
They cause runaway inflation in the cost of medicine. They make medical decisions regarding our
health and treatment.
They frustrate providers and
patients alike. They have interjected themselves soundly into our
healthcare system, much to it’s detriment.
And how do they justify
these dirty deeds? They say that they
are ‘just doing their jobs’. They are
helping ‘control the cost of medicine’. I
don’t know about you, but I’ve got a real problem with this.
First things first – who
gave them the job of ‘controlling the cost of medicine’? I certainly don’t recall doing this. Nor do I recall an Executive order, or Act of
Congress, or great public mandate demanding that they (or anyone else) help us
‘control the cost of medicine’. They
seem to have come up with this ‘job’ all by themselves.
Secondly, even if it is
their job to help us ‘control the cost
of medicine’ (and that’s a VERY BIG
‘IF”. They are doing a terrible job of it.
In the past 20-30 years, as health insurance became an ever-larger part
of the healthcare biosystem, we have watched helplessly as the cost of
healthcare has spiraled hopelessly upwards,
In other words, like that
guy outside of Port Authority smearing my windshield, they suck at their self
appointed job. Instead of improving
things, they make matters worse – in fact, much worse. It would be bad enough
if we hired them to ‘help control the cost of medicine’, but we didn't So, how do you fire someone you didn't hire? In fact, this whole scheme sounds
like something George Costanza dreamed up.
Fortunately, Manhattan
happens to hold the answer to this dilemma.
One of their most famous residents has made a second career of
this. So, it seems to me that all we
need to do is to get The Donald himself to start calling out the major players
in health insurance and let them know, in no uncertain terms, “You’re Fired!”
Now, that would be an
episode of ‘The Apprentice’ worthy of my DVR.
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