Postal ObamaCare

Okay ... so President Obama, in an effort to defend his stance that a 'public option' insurance plan can compete successfully with private insurance, toted out the US Postal Service. Basically saying that the fears of the government insurance plan would run private insurance companies out of business were unfounded because the Post Office hasn't run UPS or FedEx out of business.

Now the million dollar question is: Did President Obama not really look into that comparison very deeply, or was he intentionally misleading people, counting on the American people not looking into it?

There was a time when I was willing to chalk things like this up to naivete ... that time is past.

You see ... the problem with the comparison is that the Post Office and UPS/FedEx (et al.) technically don't compete. By federal law the US Post Office is the only entity allowed to deliver first class mail ... or 'non-urgent' mail of any kind technically.

Secondly, I thought that his health care plan was supposed to be government provided or at least government subsidized ... last time I checked the government did not provide postage, nor do they subsidize the cost of postage. So in that respect the Post Office analogy falls apart as well.

In fact ... if you take those two points and put them together you ultimately have the primary argument for the fact that government insurance option WILL be detrimental to private insurance options. Private companies can not compete against an entity that does not need to post a profit, can make and alter the rules at will (and in fact the 'rules' that they make typically only apply to competition), and can use tax money seized from private individuals in order to artificially lower the cost of its 'product'.

So why didn't he choose Medicare or Medicaid or even Veteran Services? Oh ... because of course while all of those are great indications of life under government health care, they do not play well with the public because the public knows what a cluster and hassle they are to deal with.

The fact of the matter is, even the Post Office image is not exactly a shining example of government competence either. As another columnist wrote:

'if you have an urgent piece of mail you need delivered, life or death, who are you going to call? Everyone saying the government…please raise your hands.(crickets)'

Seriously people ... I'm fairly certain that I've asked this before ... but can ANYONE name one single thing that the government does efficiently? how about anything that they do marginally okay with?

The Post Office is in trouble ... it is loosing money like never before, but it is not FedEx/UPS killing it. It is the inefficiency of the Post Office, and the lack of innovation and client service that is killing them. If the government were to open your mailbox to any real competition the Post Office would be out of business in a month ... but mail is an essential service, and private industry can't be trusted with essential services because the private sector can not be relied upon to do things correctly.

Just as private individuals can not be relied upon to spend money correctly ... the government should do it for them ....