They can't run a "cash for clunkers" scheme yet America needs them to run healthcare??

An excerpt about how "cash for clunkers" is going:

The White House and Congress may be giving the "cash for clunkers" program a reprieve, but one can't help wondering how many dealers and customers will have the confidence to go forward at this point. Things sound like a total mess in the showrooms.

"There is absolute frustration across the board," Alex Kurkin, a lawyer based in Miami who represents several car dealerships, tells The Lede today. "As of this morning, they're not really confident about any deals, and no one can give them advice about what they should be telling their customers."

One thing still not clear is how many older cars have actually been sold and scrapped with the original $1 billion, and how many more the new $2 billion will be able to cover. Mr. Kurkin tells us that the government Web site where dealers are supposed to register their deals has been crashing, and the dealers haven't been able to plug in their information....

The program requires that the clunkers be put out of service for good, so dealers must destroy the engines on cars that are traded in. We watched this process yesterday at the DCH Paramus Honda in Paramus, N.J. It is quite laborious and potentially dangerous. And it certainly is final.

Nick Clites, who is in charge of used cars for the dealership, was prepping a 1988 BMW 535IS, with 214,000 miles on the odometer, for its death. He drained the oil, then donned a silky blue protective suit, goggles and gloves and poured a sodium silicate solution into the engine. He revved the car, and within a few seconds, the solution hardened into a glass-like substance, the engine seized up and the car was dead.

So here is one question: With the program now on shaky ground, even with a new infusion of money, what consumer and what dealer will risk rendering an engine irretrievably unusable?

Well, as it turns out, a lot of them are doing so, because unless the dealers can prove to the government that they have killed the engines and scrapped the cars, the government will not reimburse them for the $3,500 or $4,500 discount that they have given the customer on a new, more efficient vehicle.

Barry Magnus, the general manager of DCH Paramus Honda, told us he was owed more than $80,000, and he wondered if he would ever see it. The government has said it would take 10 days to reimburse the dealers, but that was before the program apparently ran out of money and devolved into chaos Thursday night.

More HERE

The scheme was supposed to cost $1 billion but now has cost $3 billion. What does that tell you about likely healthcare costs?

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