What The Government Does

I wrote about this in my column this week, but it's something that that I've been thinking about more and more, both because it stuns me, and because I think it's a significant obstacle to building any sort of public support for major government management reform. To me, something like knowing that Medicare is a government-run program seems very basic. I'm not saying people are wrong for not knowing it, but whether your health care is run by the public or private sector seems like a first-order-of-business fact, even before you get to questions like premiums and the extent of coverage. If there is, in fact, a substantial number of Medicare recipients who don't know that the federal government runs their health care, and I think that's something that still remains to be proven, that situation would raise serious questions. Does the government not make it clear that Medicare is a public program? Does the government have an interest in allowing people to believe that Medicare is a private program? That would seem somewhat self-defeating, since people seem to like Medicare, but maybe there's a concern that people would opt out if they thought they were participating in a government program? (That seems unlikely to me too.) In any case, this meme seems like a case study in figuring out what the government does or doesn't communicate, and whether it communicates effectively about its operations. And those questions seem critical to answer if the Obama administration wants to build public trust in government agencies, and a case for their support and reform.

(Update: Sorry for the typos on program titles, guys. Fixed.)