04 Aug 2014 ObamaCare: Rewarding Failure

So, what happens when you botch an ObamaCare exchange?  You get a very soft landing.  From the Baltimore Sun:

Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein said Wednesday he plans to leave his post as secretary of the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, where he drew criticism for the botched rollout of the state’s health insurance exchange website.

Sharfstein, a trained pediatrician who has spent his career in public service, will join the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health as an associate dean in January as the O’Malley administration ends.

As you probably know, Maryland’s Health Benefit Exchange was one of the worst in the nation, second perhaps only to Oregon.  And what price does Sharfstein pay for getting things wrong?  None, other than possibly a few sleepless nights in the last year.

In fact, he’s getting a cushy academic job that will come with a big salary and lots of perks by his dint of having been Secretary of the Dept. of Health.  He’s reaping a big pay day despite his failure.

This is a big reason why government-run health won’t work and, eventually, is headed for disaster.  The people who run it pay no cost for being wrong and, if they hold a high enough position in the government, when they leave they will be rewarded no matter how badly they failed.  As Thomas Sowell says, “It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions.”