Simon: If it works as Eric describes, it's simply a bad piece of legislation that should be repealed or amended. If, on the other hand, there are a only a few instances where people have been cheating the system and for the remainder of its use it actually does some good in society, then those few instances are a fair price to pay.
Eric: I know that abuse of Stark provisions is endemic. A friend is a lawyer who works with such cases. They occur in every state of the Union in the tens of thousands in every state. To say it's *simply* a bad law as Simon does, or to dismiss it as Ursula does by saying there are weasels everywhere is to miss the point.
Here's the point: wherever the money is, evil people accumulate. The more money you put in social programs, the more evil people will be attracted to them, like sharks to bloody water. The evil people will work with local, state, and government officials to gain entry, much as flies infest rotting corpses. If you like to read, you go to a bookstore; if you like money, you go to situations that offer lots of money.
That's why I remarked to John that eternal vigilance is the price of a fair and efficient redistribution of wealth. That's why simply having a morally sound idea isn't enough. Not only do social programs have to be chartered in a "leak proof" fashion, they have to be kept that way, because the bacteria are always seeking entry.
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