Erroneous Payment Process and Eligibility

Here's a Federal Computer Weekly article on the administration's hopes and plans for VerifyPayment.gov, their portal to try to reduce erroneous payments and the more detailed Federal Times article.

It strikes me as a parallel to one of my better ideas, the FSA eligibility file.  As I've mentioned before, I visited ASCS county offices in the late 60's, spending enough time to observe the detailed work processes.  I remember being struck in one office by the clerk's (this was in the days before they were called "program assistants", much less "program technicians" as I believe today's nomenclature is) systematic process for issuing deficiency payments.  Essentially she had what Atul Gawande has written a book about: a checklist.

Move forward a number of years and we're trying to implement the payment process on the IBM System/36.  But there was a problem between assembling the necessary data to compute the payments and actually approving and printing the checks.  That's where the idea of the eligibility file/checklist came in: a place to record the various determinations which affected payment eligibility (i.e., controlled substance conviction, sod/swamp, etc.). And our Kansas City developers could create a common routine, so any FSA program area could inquire to see if the producer was eligible for that program.

As a digression, I've always regretted we didn't have the available people to build on the eligibility file to automate the source documents  It wouldn't have been that difficult and would have eliminated the gap between the county committee making a determination and getting it  recorded in the eligibility file.

Anyhow, back to the Verifypayment process--it seems to me the Feds could and should take the same approach: make a front-end process which tells the calling entity whether the subject is alive and eligible for the payment.  The website lists some of the major program areas they're focusing on, but the approach could be expanded so that state and local governments could access it, as well as OPM for deceased annuitants. 

Ho Hum, A White House Rural Council

From the USDA blog, an announcement of a cross-cabinet council to focus on rural matters.  The chances of this accomplishing anything significant: zilch.

The "name" members are all cabinet officers, who are much too busy doing their day jobs to spend any real time or effort, much less money, on this.  The people who will actually attend the meetings, after the first one, are assistants to the  deputy assistant under secretary, someone whose time is not valuable. 

They're With the Protestant Supreme Court Justices

That's my answer to the question John Fea uses as the title of his post.  I suspect there is some relationship between the lack of mainline Protestants on the Supreme Court and as candidates for President on the Republican ticket.

If You Can't Do It, Change the Rules

Via Farm Policy, here's an article on the possibility of going to 2-year budgets.  It's probably a good idea, but it reflects Congressional failure to pass budgets under the current system.  And the current system reflected Congressional failure to pass budgets under the prior system  And the prior system reflected Congressional failure to take a comprehensive view of expenditures and income.  It's called moving the goalposts.

Brooks and Economics of Healthcare

One of the things I miss in the current chattering classes commentary is a focus on market structure.  The questions of monopoly and pricing power don't play much of a role in current debates.  For me, I remember the strain surrounding the receipt of the monthly (I think) milk check and egg check.  We'd shipped off our milk and eggs, consigned my parents' work to the fates, and waited to see what we'd receive in return.  Open the envelope and see the check amount: maybe it's up, maybe down.  The closest parallel I can come to in today's life is the arrival of the bills for electricity and water/sewage.

In both cases, the person has no pricing power; they're at the mercy of the market structure.  

David Brooks has a piece  on healthcare saying Democrats believe in the power of government experts to cut costs, Republicans believe in the power of competition and consumer choice.  I'd say that misses the fact that government, as purchasing agent for consumers, can have pricing power; consumers in the context of the healthcare market don't.

USDA's IT Reforms

Described here at the CIO  blog.  Everyone is moving to the cloud for email and collaboration?

A Form for Everything

That's the motto of the bureaucrat: if something happens more than once, you need a form. 

Tom Ricks at the Best Defense passes on an example of one.

Having just watched the DVD No End in Sight (which I liked better than his more recent documentary) I'm not sure the form should be called a parody.  See for yourself.  BTW, I think "COA" is military for "course of action".

Erroneous Payments from OPM

Amidst the concern about government agencies making erroneous payments, add another to the list.  Apparently OPM has a problem making annuity payments to dead retirees or their spouses.  The article says they check the SSA's death data, so it's not clear whether it's an OPM problem or a SSA problem.

On Poor Farmers

There's a double meaning in the title of this post.  The usual meaning is farmers whose income is low, low compared to other farmers in the area or nation, low compared to what's needed for a good life in the nation, low compared to someone else. See this Treehugger/Oxfam post.

But the other meaning is farmers who farm poorly, poorly because their land is poor, poorly because they're far away from markets, poorly because they lack the knowledge, the social capital, others have.  Many would like to believe in the Lake Woebegone corollary, that all farmers are above average.  I regret to inform you that's not true; whichever nation or locality we're talking about, some farmers are good and some aren't.  Some land is good, some isn't.  Some land is on the railroad, some isn't. Some farmers have learned from experience what works, some are stuck in a rut.  Some farmers are open to new ideas and techniques, some are waiting to die.

Alfalfa: I Didn't Know That

"  It take alfalfa about a week in hot drying weather to turn into hay. "  That's from this post from Life on a Colorado Farm.

In Broome County, NY alfalfa was not a big crop, wasn't even a small crop that I remember.  Now I'm assuming that Colorado's "hot drying weather" has lots less humidity than we had.  But the big factor would be rain: our usual pattern would be to get rain pretty regularly over the summer, enough to damage and often to spoil any hay in the field.  But the timothy/orchard grass hay which was common didn't take that long to cure.  Mow one day, rake the afternoon of the next day, and bale on the third day would be the normal pattern.  Leave the hay in the field much longer and the risk of rain would be too great. 

So that, plus the difficulty of getting a good stand of alfalfa established, probably explains why there wasn't much alfalfa grown.