A lot of it is surely the expertise to navigate the bureaucracy. It's not like it's simple to setup a competing service and manage to get a government contract.
> It's not like it's simple to setup a competing service and manage to get a government contract.
In Nebraska you have to ask your competitors permission to compete with them:
"If you are allowed to drive a home health patient to get groceries, can that passenger also get her prescription filled? In Nebraska, that would be against the law unless you had permission from the government to operate a non-emergency medical transportation company. And, by the state’s certificate of need or “CON” law, the only way to get permission is for the existing transportation companies to allow you to operate."
Things like this happen all over the place nationally. To me much of it looks like garden variety corruption as opposed to some kind of reward for figuring out how to work with the government.
Americans love to through around "beauracracy", but the article states we have too weak and balkanized a civil service. This is a very different issue.
