An Ounce of Prevention

Ben Franklin was one of the most interesting, brilliant, and free spirited founders of the United States.  His Poor Richard’s Almanac printed quips of advice. He actually got started as a young writer by writing advice columns for his brother’s newspaper.  He was our country’s first “Dear Abby”. How many of us haven’t grown up hearing “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?”  My consulting firm–The Minerva Group–spent most of the 1980s teaching businesses and public organizations how to build quality in rather than rely on faulty inspection to sort out mishaps.  One of the biggest reasons this is important is cost savings.  If you’re in manufacturing, mistakes turn into expensive scrap.  If you’re in services, you waste human energy and frequently irritate customers.  When I consulted for the Air Force during the first Gulf War I was frequently reminded by the Colonels I worked with that their mistakes could cost lives.  Why is it the Republicans have forgotten this lesson in the rush to be stingier than thou?

Suzy Khimm writes for Mother Jones.  Her latest article called “Death by a Single GOP Cut” illustrates the medical and public health implications of underfunding immunizations among other initiatives.

In the past year, California has experienced the worst whooping cough outbreak in more than 50 years, an epidemic that has killed 10 infants and resulted in 6,400 reported cases. But even as the state’s public health officials have struggled to curb the disease, Republicans in Congress have proposed slashing millions in federal funding for immunization programs. Public health advocates warn that these cuts threaten efforts across the country to prevent and contain infectious and sometimes fatal diseases. And they add that lower vaccination rates could eventually result in more outbreaks that endanger public health at a major cost to taxpayers.

The House GOP’s 2011 budget would chop $156 million from the Centers for Disease Control’s funding for immunization and respiratory diseases. The GOP reductions are likely to hit the CDC’s support for state and local immunization programs, the agency’s ability to evaluate which vaccines are working, and its work to educate the public about recommended vaccines for children, teenagers, and other susceptible populations. The CDC especially focuses on serving lower-income families who receive vaccines at state and local health offices and community health clinics, rather than a private doctor’s office.

There’s another old saying that goes like this:  “Pennywise and Pound foolish”. Ezra Klein borrowed that one to quip on more GOP cost cutting antics.

There are three categories of spending in which cuts lead to more, rather than less, spending down the line, says Alice Rivlin, former director of both the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget. Inspection, enforcement and maintenance. The GOP is trying to cut all three.

There’s a war on common sense going on in this country. It’s based in some fairly crazy ideology that appears to appreciation inefficiency and cost run ups rather than pooling a country’s resources to achieve a good outcome.  Klein’s post is just full of examples where eliminating government programs will lead to bad outcomes.  Just think about all the outbreaks of e coli or food poisoning  just out there waiting to happen because some company would rather cut corners than do reliable inspections, buy or fix equipment, or hire people that are trained and know what they’re doing?  The best example of the lunacy is the proposed cuts to the agency responsible for tsunami monitoring Republicans suggested days before a tsunami hit both California and Hawaii.  Early warning systems and method of prevention save lives and a lot of money.

Let’s face it.  Many elected officials would rather gamble with our lives and our safety than admit that government can do some good things.  They’d rather privatize everything let us all beware when we’re forced into using the product or service.  I have no idea where this insanity comes from but I’d like it to stop now.  I don’t mind paying taxes when it goes to a good cause.  What I object of to paying for are sweetheart, no bid deals to big corporations that mark up everything to achieve obscene profits and donate huge sums to politicians to get them to overlook their abusive practices.  One of these days we’ll go back to appreciating public goods like education, interstate highways, and immunization programs.  I would’ve thought that the levee failure during Hurricane Katrina would have provided some lessons on what happens when you underfund the maintenance and construction of projects in the public interest.  This is just more hard core libertarian nonsense that needs to return the pages of Atlas Shrugged and other bad fiction like studies produced by the Cato Institute and Reason Magazine.