Biffster’s World

I often feel sorry for Bill Ritter. As wonderful as it is that he is now the Governor of Colorad, he inherited a few major messes from the Bill Owens administration. One of the major messes regards the state’s computer systems. These projects cost state taxpayers millions of dollars and ended up being scrapped:

Gov. Bill Ritter has ordered sweeping changes in an effort to halt Colorado’s dismal record of buying expensive computer systems that don’t work.He issued an executive order seven weeks ago that begins to centralize control over the state’s scattered computer systems and gives unprecedented authority to a single technology executive, State Chief Information Officer Mike Locatis.

Under the previous Owens administration, the state contracted to spend $325 million on five new computer systems that were unable to: pay welfare benefits on time, pay road crews overtime, track voters or unemployment benefits, or issue license plates.

Bill Owens had no problem allowing contracts to a variety of vendors, spending taxpayer money with little-to-no regard to whether the projects were needed, whether they would actually work. No nods were given towards due diligence. Owens simply believed that giving tax dollars to private corporations would automatically yield good results. It seems to be a classic oversite by the whole neocon movement, and Owens embraced it, hook, line and sinker.

Fortunately, Bill Ritter is much more level-headed about this. He allows that many of the projects are needed, but should be done right. He has hired Mike Locatis - a man with a great resume and a lot of experience in consolidating computer systems for major entities. In the end, we’ll end up with a good system that’ll save us money. And Ritter will prove again that government cannot just feed money to private enterprise, but must hold private enterprise responsible.

The following is an article I posted to the co.general newsgroup on Usenet, in response to a couple of posters complaining that providing universal health care would unfairly force people who didn’t want to to pay for health care for those who can’t afford it:

Try to follow the bouncing ball here: A poor person has a heart attack and
is taken to an emergency room. He gets treatment, but can’t pay. The
hospital loses money, and to recoup that it raises its rates. Insurance
companies have to pay more money to the hospital, so they raise their
premiums for members.

Now theoretically, people who can’t afford medical care only go to the
emergency room, and theoretically only when they are having major medical
problems. So theoretically, the costs that they are passing on are quite
large.

Instead of doing this, if we had a health care system that would provide
options for those who can’t afford private insurance, they could get
treatment and preventive care that would keep them from having to go to the
ER. The total cost would be less than what we are seeing now.

You seem to believe that society in general isn’t already footing the costs
for providing health care to those who can’t afford it. We are. If you have
health insurance, just look at how much your premiums, copays, and
out-of-pocket expenses have gone up over the last decade.