Accountability

My soapbox, of late, has centered on service providers that deal in various aspects of home improvement, but over the years I've certainly had plenty to say about medical professionals, as have my friends. This Zagat thing is a welcome development, and I hope more insurance providers take it up. An doctor and even his or her office staff--and I hear more complaints about them than about actual doctors--can make your life hell even without being technically incompetent. In my case, years ago when I lacerated my forearm, I fired my doctor for a combination of not listening, needlessly scaring the crap out of me, refusing to do his job and otherwise wasting my time. I sent my insurance company a letter and gave him a poor rating on an online medical site, but it would have been great to slam his ass in a more widely read setting. I have no doubt that he felt he could get away with his bull$hit because he knew that no one would ever know. What could be better than bringing accountability without litigation to the medical system?

It is because of accountability, not schadenfreude, that this kind of made my day. Still, the hypocrisy is stunning. These people insist that they have every right to go on with their lives and careers as if they had nothing to do with ruining other people's.

On a somewhat related note, guess who balked when asked to do her job:

A couple of weeks before the Alaska legislature began this year's session, a bipartisan group of state senators on a retreat a few hours from here invited Gov. Sarah Palin to join them. Accompanied by a retinue of advisers, she took a seat at one end of a conference table and listened passively as Gary Stevens, the president of the Alaska Senate, a former college history professor and a low-key Republican with a reputation for congeniality, expressed delight at her presence.
Would the governor, a smiling Stevens asked, like to share some of her plans and proposals for the coming legislative session?

Palin looked around the room and paused, according to several senators present. "I feel like you guys are always trying to put me on the spot," she said finally, as the room became silent.

Perhaps the best revelation in that article is that an Alaskan GOP legislator calls her "Dan Quayle with a ponytail."

Tom Friedman on posthumous accountability.

And then there's equal opportunity accountability:

Executives of banks that have received TARP cash have said that it is too hard to account separately for how they spend their federal dollars. Money is fungible, they argue, and therefore they cannot readily distinguish between outlays of their own resources and those provided by the government. But that’s the type of doublespeak that would get the head of a town’s homeless shelter thrown in jail. If bankers are unable to segregate cash by source and specifically account for expenditures, why are they in charge of banks in the first place?