by D. Cupples | Private contractors tend to cost us taxpayers more money than government employees, if only by the amount of contractors' profits. In 2005, the old Congress and President Bush approved a Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) provision, which requires the Defense Department to close the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP). The AFIP performs three major services: diagnostic consultations, education, and disease research.
According to the Government Accountability Office, the DOD plans to privatize much of the AFIP's services. Apparently, the politicians controlling the U.S. government in 2005 hadn't learned from our nation's troubled history with private contractors -- or didn't care.
A recent GAO Report states that the Defense Department anticipates cost as a major challenge of privatizing the AFIP's services -- i.e., officials fear that they may not get quality services at reasonable prices (report, p. 26).
History provides solid grounds for that fear. Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, stories of contractor waste, fraud and abuse have been as common as fleas on a dog.
But it's not just defense contractors who have ravenously slurped at the taxpayers' trough. Even medical contractors -- including labs, hospitals, insurance companies, and individual doctors -- have unreasonably (even criminally) strained our resources. For specific examples, see the posts linked below.
Given how widely publicized contractor waste and fraud have been, why do so many self-styled "fiscally conservative" politicians still favor privatization?
Related BN-Politics Posts:
* Contractor Fraud: Driving up War's Costs
* Contractor Fraud: Driving up Healthcare Costs
* Taxpayers Losing Money to Engorged Contractors
* Private Insurers Milking Medicare
* Drug Companies Scammed Taxpayers & Cancer Patients
* FEMA: Poor Management or Corruption?
* DoD Rewarding Bad Contractor Performance?
* Justice Dept. Official Turned Blind Eye to Contractor Fraud?
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