Three of the Saw household had a letter from the NHS today. (Daughter #1 is probably registered at university).
Summary Care Records are being introduced and one can opt in (by doing nothing) or opt out by sending back the reply.
Now the population of this county was 683,000 in 2009. No matter what size family people live in let's assume that each person over 16 receives a letter, so that's about 553,000 letters. I'll be generous and work on a figure of 500,000 letters. If a second class stamp costs 36p, then the cost of the exercise was:
£180,000 of which the Saw family cost £1.08.
This does not take into account those who opt out and decide to post their response back again. Nor have I included the cost of the paper.
Multiply this nationwide and you can see why the country and NHS is in a mess.
I estimate the cost (using 2009 figures) as £14,664,240 in England alone.
A Brilliant Finish
46 minutes ago
4 comments:
They could have saved money by printing their letters on old fivers.
Steve: I guess so.
Waste is typical of any bureaucracy, and the longer a bureaucracy is in existence, the more likely it is to waste resources.
Two "Laws" apply to this exercise:
Parkinson's Law:
"Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion,"
and its corollary, which alters but one term:
"Work expands so as to consume the resources available for its completion."
And then there's Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy:
"In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely."
Pournelle has restated it in another form I've seen more often:
"...in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representatives who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions."
While a certain level of bureaucracy is essential to managing a complex organization (such as a government entity), these comments from astute observers of bureaucratic behavior ring true and indicate that the longer an organization exists, the more likely it is to be ruled by "type 2" bureaucrats whose actions are detrimental to the ends the organization was instituted to serve.
This leads me to think of the line of greatest genius in the American Declaration of Independence,
"...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends ["Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
(Of course, one ought to take note of late 18th Century meanings of the word, "happiness" in this context, especially its strong ties to the concept of material good.)
David: Thank you for this, the longest ever comment on my blog.
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