I mean self- as in self-regulating.

Automoron is a term I propose (like oxymoron) to indicate a word or prefix that, by being there, pretty much denies what comes immediately after.

Examples of self-regulation, self-investigation, self-auditing, self-inspecting, are all to common and generally have the same automoronic effect: lax regulation, shallow investigation, cursory auditing, flattering assessments.

Doctors investigating each other is one anti-favourite of mine.
The Special Investigations Unit investigating serious police actions is another.

I am going to apparently change topic here, but it will all make some sort of coherent sense at the end.

No matter what you think of Michael Moore and his video Sicko, you should watch the part where a woman doctor of significant achievement and standing is crying while testifying to the US Congress.

“I think of how often I wrote those fateful words: Denied.”

She had been hired by a US health insurance firm to manage claims. At first, there was a general understanding that some ten percent of claims are bogus. Then there was publication of every worker on the floor’s claims rejection rate. Then there was pressure to make a ten percent rejection rate. Then it became like a quota system.

Then the rejection rate required kept being increased.

It was her job, a professional physician, to find ways to deny a claim, ways that might either stick, or discourage the claimant from trying for redress.

Now I am returning to the original topic of self-inspection.

Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, or WSIB, is an Ontario government body that, in the words of its own website,

Oversees workplace safety education and training, provides disability benefits, monitors the quality of health care, and assists in early and safe return to work.

WSIB was recently challenged for the way in which it rejects claims.

This work is contracted out.
It is performed over the telephone.
Claims are rejected when no face to face interview has taken place.
The rejection rate is now about fifteen percent.

WSIB ‘audited itself’ and discovered that it’s practices in this regard are perfectly OK and are fair to the claimants.
I wonder if they conducted this self-inspection by telephone without meeting any of the contractors who reject injury claims by telephone.

What’s really got my attention here is the fifteen percent rejection rate.

• This is a public number (like the ten percent starting rate in the US health insurance testimony)
• Contractors cannot possibly be motivated to increase their client’s costs.
• Rejection by telephone seems to be to be the flimsiest possible evidence on which to assume (and essentially convict of) application fraud
• 15% seems high. More than one in seven claims is bogus?
• Bonuses in large organizations, including large bureaucracies, is based on increased income and/or reduced costs.
• Could there possibly be pressure to raise that 15% bar?

I think we need a real audit of

• this rejection rate
• this method of assessing claims
• this method of assessing how we asses, at WSIB

Comments? usual rules apply.