The 10,000-hour rule

I thought about the 10,000-hour rule as I saw the
unemployment numbers come out and as Congress started debate on healthcare. Both
private-sector job creation and healthcare are extraordinarily complex
processes. Congress is not particularly well-suited to deal with either one.

When congressional Democrats passed their stimulus package
earlier this year, they passed a plan that was heavy on government spending
but light on tax relief to allow businesses to spend their own money. Rep. David
Obey (D-Wis.), the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, has true expertise when it
comes to spending taxpayers’ money. He has been in Congress for more than 30 years, and for most of that time, he has been on the spending committees
of Congress. He has gained true expertise when it comes to appropriating money.
He doesn’t know a thing about creating private-sector jobs, though. His
philosophy doesn’t really understand the free-market. He doesn’t have expertise
because he hasn’t spent 10,000 hours in the private marketplace. So when he
constructed the stimulus package, he put together a bill that was good at
spending taxpayers’ money but bad at creating jobs. The result is what we have
today: unemployment at greater than 10 percent.

When Congress debates that healthcare bill this weekend, the
same dynamic will take hold. No matter how hard the members study over the
weekend, they will not have the necessary proficiency to really understand the healthcare
marketplace. Now, some will argue that because the AMA and AARP have endorsed
the bill, this shows this bill reflects the realities of the world. But
when you look closer, you see that for both the AMA and AARP, they got special
deals (physician payments and special breaks for the AARP) that compelled them
to sign on. PhRMA, another supporter, signed on because they were afraid of
what the Congress would do to them if they didn’t back it.

But the medical world is a very complex place, and having the congressional leadership basically dictate the terms of the marketplace will
inevitably have unintended consequences. One only need look at Medicare to
see how the marketplace has been skewed by the government presence. Reimbursement
rates are too low, which encourages doctors to practice overly defensive
medicine. Fraud is rampant. Cost controls that would come from a more rational
market are neutered. The result is not healthcare nirvana, but rather a system
that is out of control.

Putting the future of the healthcare marketplace in the
hands of people who have no proficiency in healthcare should be very scary. And
for many voters, it is.

In last year’s election, the American people decided to
ditch the 10,000-hour rule. They elected perhaps the most inexperienced
politician in our nation’s history as president. In fact, experience was seen
more as a detriment than as a plus. Both Hillary Clinton and John McCain tried
to stress Obama’s lack of training for the job, but the American people, who
had seen the very experienced hands of Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld, concluded
that the experience was overrated. As we are seeing with this president, the
people reached the wrong conclusions about the value of experience.

Barack Obama, whom almost everyone agrees seems like a nice
enough fellow, is being victimized by his own lack of experience. He has been
overly deferential to his former colleagues in the Senate, because he has no
clue about how to cut a deal. Even the liberal historian Doris Kearns Goodwin has
lamented that Obama needs a little more “LBJ” in him.

What LBJ had in him was experience. But Obama still needs
about six more years to have the proficiency necessary to deal with the big egos
in the Congress. He has failed the 10,000-hour test, and that is what is
showing now as he tries to figure out how to deal with Congress.

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