Thursday, September 09, 2010

Not So Fast

I don’t know about y’all, but I was taught to under-promise and over-deliver. 

Just over two weeks ago, Kenneth Feinberg took over the process for handling damage claims from the Gulf oil spill, pledging to cut down the response time from BP’s widely criticized system to two days for individuals and seven days for businesses that file fully documented claims.

After a rocky start in which claimants have reported chronic delays and confusion, Feinberg is now retreating from his targets and acknowledging that the process will take longer than he had pledged.

“The announced 48-hour claim determination rule for individual claims, and the seven-day claim determination rule for business claims will be extended as necessary and appropriate,”  Feinberg’s spokeswoman Amy Weiss told the investigative newsroom ProPublica.  “The policy remains to review all individual and business claims as quickly as possible.”

(2) Comments
Posted by Owen at 2026 hrs
Politics + Politics - General

  1. Seems like BP was doing a better job than the government.  What a shock.

    Posted by Dan on September 09, 2010 at 2338 hrs


  2. Dan - that may be true but I wouldn’t be so sure. Though there’s a ton that I disagree with in the feds handling of this (though I respect the hell out of the job Retired Admiral Allen has done & think the Obama Administration owes him huge for salvaging a situation they completely screwed up) the fact of the matter is, it makes sense for the claims to be processed independently - not directly by the party who must pay them. I don’t doubt for a second that BP is capable of processing them more quickly than the feds, I just don’t think they actually would. They have millions of reasons to be slow and provide additional hoops for people to jump through.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on September 10, 2010 at 1024 hrs


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