The Medical Freedom Channel

The temporary day-job continues to enlighten your editor. This week, a new insight: When in doubt, blame the IRS!

Let me explain: The other day, while engaged in my current duties of opening envelopes, pulling staples and prepping paperwork for scanning and further processing, I came across something that almost made me laugh out loud. In one batch of mail (whose source, identity and type shall remain undisclosed) I found about 50 envelopes, all from the same return-address, with ONE two-page enclosure in each — all involving the same subject, though concerning different cases — and each one bearing a first-class stamp.

Alongside these were perhaps another 30 or 40 envelopes, all from that very same source, containing TWO such submissions, and each also with a stamp attached. Only now, in addition to the extra two sheets of paper (still easily weighing in under the single-stamp barrier), there was stapled to the first page of each submission a small slip of paper containing the following message:

We have enclosed two [forms] since we didn’t receive envelopes for every [form].

These were done on lavender paper, carefully cut into strips (with wide top/bottom margins, as shown by the occasional thicker strip, with space above or below the message). This was obviously the result of a brainstorm (or other suffix?) on the part of some clerical worker at that facility, perhaps even with the okay of the proprietor. Apparently, the thought of stacking all those requests for further consideration (identical in each case, except for the specifics of particular cases), then placing them all into ONE ENVELOPE (with appropriate and much-cheaper postage for the package … never occurred to these rocket-surgeons.

It got me to pondering for a bit as I fumbled through this enormous pile of work, made necessary only by the similar amounts of effort required in preparing all these forms for transmission. For each envelope I had to remove an extra staple, set aside the “purple prose,” pull the additional staples connecting both two-page enclosures (being careful not to tear the pages in the process), and then stack all of that paper on the appropriate pile for that sort of batching for processing. Meanwhile, each of those envelopes had previously required both the continued stapling, and attaching (not to mention the printing and cutting into strips), as well as an individual stamp for each piece of mail. How much simpler would it have been to stack them all, stuff them into one large envelope, put ONE postage amount on the whole mess and lay it into the outgoing mailbox?

And then it struck me: when in doubt, blame the Infernal Revenue Service! It really is all their fault, if we consider how one must operate — whether as a full-fledged business, or as a fledgling entrepreneur seeking to write off expenses in a start-up endeavor: One seeks to categorize those expenses as simply as possible. And what’s the least likely thing to get challenged by the auditor-types? Postage and mailing costs, along with the salaries and other costs related to hiring someone to handle your paperwork!

Consider this: An individual seeking tax deductions hires an accountant to find them; doing it yourself is not deductible, while paying someone else to do so is, whether or not the hired hand finds more to deduct. Similarly, if you seek a write-off, nothing’s easier than spending gobs of money on postage and mailing, since it comes directly back off the bottom-line. Thus, the incentive to economize — on stationery, envelopes, stamps or other related items — is offset completely by the ease with which these may be used to balance out the profit-margin. As long as you are bringing in enough to make ends meet, who cares how much you squander on these activities?

Meanwhile, for every vendor, practitioner or other businessperson profligately spewing postage and paperwork into the world, there are a roster of other companies, agencies and similar entities, waiting with open arms to accept all that flow. Since each of these is also able to write off the clerical hours, office supplies and ancillary items required to respond to the onslaught, there’s no real downside for any of them. So it stands to reason, perhaps, that a clerical worker in [name withheld] might consider it an “error” when there’s only one return-envelope enclosed to address two different issues, even when they involve the same general case.

But what is this creating in the so-called “real world”? Enormous piles of paper, an exorbitant use of the U.S. Post Office (which holds a government-enforced monopoly on first-class mail) and an excruciating amount of generally needless extra processing. All this, because the incentive to waste resources and effort has been created and enhanced by the tax system, rewarding profligacy while indirectly penalizing thrift and economy.

Who really cares? We all should, but I fear that for many of us this is just considered another fact of life. For this editor, however, it’s becoming a bit infuriating. Each day on the job I see more and more indications of why digging our way out of the healthcare mess is going to be even more difficult than our worst fears might lead us to believe. The culture of waste and inefficiency, only partially mitigated by those of us seeking to streamline and simplify procedures for getting things done, is firmly entrenched around us.

And when the very systems allegedly set up to fund and support a sane society (the larger question, that coercive funding is itself inherently wrong, shall be set aside for the sake of this argument) – as they are, according to those who believe “government” is not a personal action of responsible autonomy, but an institutional and “societal” blessing – are designed to expend energy, not conserve it, on peripheral issues of administration and bureaucracy …

It’s little wonder that efforts to decentralize power, in healthcare or in our overall lives, face such vehement opposition from those who benefit from this excess.