In dealing with government programs, I realized why there is such a fear of health care reform in this country. It is not because the government is evil, but because it is intransigent and inefficient.
Government Program 1 – Early Deportation in the New York State Penal System –
A foreign defendant is eligible for early deportation having physically served one half (50%) of her time. She has a deportation order that assures the Department of Corrections that upon her release from prison she will be turned over to ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) for deportation. However, there is a delay in her release because she must first go through a “merit time” review. At this hearing the defendant’s behavior and performance are reviewed to determine whether or not she merits further reduction of her sentence.
But she does not want or need the benefit of this additional “good time.” She just wants to go home, to her country. In fact, since she is not a resident, she can only go home. But the government disagrees and states that she has to go through the “merit time” hearing anyway. Only afterwards will she go before the parole board for her “early deportation” hearing. Why not send her to the parole board first? “Well, they may reject her,” says the bureaucrat. But if the parole board were to reject her, couldn’t she then go to the “merit time” hearing. “No,” says the bureaucrat, “because that is not how we do it.” As a result, the defendant is forced to have a “merit time” hearing, which is of no value to her and delays her parole hearing. It is enough to pull your hair out.
Government Program 2 – Parole Revocation in the Federal System –
Yes, there actually was parole at one time in the federal system. And for those defendants who were paroled before the program was terminated, it is alive and well in the form of parole revocation.
For example, a parolee is arrested for a new crime and sentenced to five years imprisonment. Instead of opening a parole violation file upon learning of the parolee’s conviction, to review the case while the defendant serves his time, the parole commission does next to nothing. It files a “detainer” with federal authorities requesting that the commission be notified of the defendant’s impending release five years hence so that the commission can take him into custody for the purpose of considering the violation.
Once the five years are up, THEN AND ONLY THEN will the parole commission set up a file, review the violation and do all the things it could have done over the past five years. Now the prisoner will sit in stir—sometimes for up to three months, which the law allows, thus officially giving its imprimatur.
Why not conduct the review during the parolee’s incarceration? “Because that is not the way we do it,” explain commission officials. Now, these officials are not evil. They are not stubborn. They just do not care and you can not get their attention, because it is not happening to them or their loved ones. Their brother, husband, son or daughter are not serving three additional months while the parole commission does what it could have done five years earlier. In cases where the defendant is not sentenced to additional time, three months in prison is gratuitous.
Government Program 3 – Deportation After Release From Prison –
This oversight is expensive and completely avoidable. A defendant is serving five years, after which he is to be released and deported. He is an illegal alien. During the course of his incarceration an ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) officer visits the defendant to serve an “order to show cause.” This provides him with an opportunity to explain why he should not be deported. The prisoner may or may not acknowledge service, depending on how upset he is, and the officer goes on his way.
Years pass and release day comes, but because the defendant has a “detainer” in his file stating he is deportable, ICE wants to pick him up and take him into custody to process his deportation. So, upon his release the defendant is officially turned over to ICE officials, who, like the Bureau of Prisons, also work for the U.S. government, and they take the defendant to a state or county facility which they contract at rates easily rivaling those of hotels in this country. He is kept there for two months, sometimes defendants are kept longer depending on where they are to be deported, while ICE, FOR THE FIRST TIME, begins the process of deportation.
An ICE official then goes to the county or state prison to interview the defendant. The interview will determine if the defendant is here legally or illegally (another ground for deportation), and if the defendant has been convicted of a drug charge or money laundering charge (an automatic mandatory ground for deportation). This interview does not take more than 20 minutes and obtaining the relevant information could not take more than thirty seconds. The information is then forwarded to a trial attorney who eventually places it on a judge’s calendar.
This is happening here, not in a third world country. Why? The deportation process should be done while the defendant is serving his five years in FEDERAL custody. ICE officials go to see the defendant anyway to serve him with an “order to show cause.” Why not spend another five or ten minutes and conduct an interview with the defendant so that by the time the defendant is released he can be deported right away? No time would be wasted, and no expense incurred paying for county or state jails to hold deportable defendants. Once again, “Because it is not the way we do it.”
Plenty of people have had their own battles with the government and its bureaucrats and been met with resistance every step of the way, so they know about government inefficiency. And most of these victims’ objections go unheard because the victims are part of a discrete constituency without any clout. The cancer patient is denied treatments under Medicare, the contractor is denied money, the pensioner is denied pension. Who is going to care about a convicted alien?
But with health care, the constituency is “us” and our collective experience of being victimized by the inefficiency—not the evil—of the system. We are angry and now the government proposes to handle health care? That is a scary thought, because each of us, the parolee, the alien, the cancer patient, the war veteran, has had a terrible experience with government inefficiency over the simplest things. Imagine the government handling health care!
The government’s indifference to this inefficiency has come back to haunt it. I am a liberal and I see the benefits of taking charge of our health care. We care about each other and want others to care about us. We want the best health care at the lowest price, to do away with the private companies that will do anything to improve the bottom line. Health care is too important to be left to the greedy. But there is also the government’s inefficiency to consider. While I am getting what I want with the private sector, I am also paying for it through the nose. On the other hand, I am not getting what I want from the public sector, because the government has proven to be inefficient. So it seems that either way I am being taken advantage of.
People are angry, and the government has brought this problem on itself. It cannot process an alien efficiently, but it can quickly get billions of dollars to Wall Street.