Arguments over Medicaid for the evacuees from the storm, for example, further complicate attempts to rebuild lives. Eligibility requirements vary from state to state, and evacuees from Katrina open a new category of Medicaid recipients. Who gets Medicaid money, how they qualify and how eligibility is determined is crucial. No one, especially politicians, wants to be Ebenezer Scrooge when confronted with suffering, but Pandora's familiar box floats above the receding floodwaters. Negotiating state-by-state regulations is frustrating and time-consuming, but one size fits all can be easily abused.
"You're torn between 'Take care of the people that need taking care of, period' and doing it in a way that doesn't break the bank," Rep. Joe Barton, Texas Republican, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, tells The Wall Street Journal.
Great sums of public money are at stake in the restoration and reconstruction of the flooded neighborhoods of New Orleans, and greedy hands are already outstretched, eager to grasp contracts that will be worth in excess of $200 billion. Red tape is always a nuisance, but cutting it without caution invites fraud, and especially in Louisiana, where fraud was perfected if not invented. Urgency can beget sloppiness and venality, and like the devil, they come in many disguises. Sometimes the pig that oinks the loudest becomes the pork chop.
We count on government to do its part, but we must be wary of the middlemen of good intentions, those who come to do good and stay to do well. Temptation flies in the eye of the storm, and often leaves the most terrible devastation of all in its wake.