Dependent's Day

My wife said while looking at yesterday’s mail today: “The government wastes a lot of money.”

I agreed, and asked, “How so this time?”

She held up a couple of envelopes and several pieces of paper, six as she counted.

“These six pages are invoices for two prescriptions,” she said. The invoices were from the Tricare-paid insurance company. The two three-page invoices arrived in separate envelopes. “Here, we have two window envelopes. One for each invoice.”

I said, “You don’t owe anything on the prescriptions, do you?”

“The invoices are for zero,” she said. “Two separate invoices in two separate envelopes, both for zero.”

What really got her going, though, were the two window envelopes. My wife has managed offices for two different non-profit organizations, one in Texas and one in Arkansas. She has done statewide contracts for IT, printing and office supplies and equipment; supervised six separate offices; managed multi-million-dollar budgets and done a whole lot of other stuff. She knows how much things cost, and she recognizes inefficiency and excess.

“These window envelopes cost 10 to 15 cents each,” she said. “And when you add in the postage … Of course, there won’t be any postage payment, because we won’t send zero payment. How many are there of these? How many zero invoices go out each month? You and I get around five. How many more are there? Five million? Every month?”

“Probably more,” I said.

“They could program all the zero invoices not to receive a window envelope,” she said. “It wouldn’t be that hard. Who’s it going to cost? Maybe the people who print the envelopes.”