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Dollars Will Be Lost In Unskilled Hands

The price we pay because our illustrious government leaders tend to fill key positions with political appointees rather than seeking out people with the appropriate credentials and experience is evidenced by the recent audit report of Buffalo Comptroller Andrew SanFilippo on the city’s health insurance fiasco, in which $2 million in health insurance premiums were paid for deceased employees.

There is absolutely no excuse for this. This would not happen in the private sector where credentials and experience are the deciding factors in appointing someone to a position of importance.

As a CPA and business consultant with 40 years of experience, I can say that procedures to control this issue in a city the size of Buffalo would be relatively easy to implement. When, as a political appointee, you are over your head in a position and do not have the experience necessary to know how to manage an operation, the result is exactly what was reported—millions of wasted dollars.

The City of Buffalo health insurance system should be a relatively simple matter to have under control and yet errors resulted in millions of dollars lost. I wonder what kind of fraud, abuse and error controls exist in the more complex systems at county, state and federal levels.

Scary, isn’t it? And here we are moving toward more government involvement in all aspects of our lives. Even more scary, isn’t it?

Michael D. Deakin
North Tonawanda