If you are impressed with the performance of the U.S. Postal Service, you are going to love government run healthcare. One recommendation I would have for the post office would be to permanently cut residential delivery to three days a week. Everyone would get their mail either M-W-F, or T-Th-S. That way you could reduce residential mail delivery staff by close to 50%. I would bet that would save them a bunch more than $3.8 billion a year. There is no reason why people should feel entitled to receive residential mail delivery six days per week. It is a very expensive and unnecessary indulgence.
I'm way more satisfied with my postal service than the corporatrion run healtrh care we have now. Also anyone not satisfied with the public option of health care doesn't have to do it.
How on earth is this relevant to the healthcare plan? USPS is doing terrible because snail mail is doing terrible. The reason for that is quite obvious. Hand-delivered mail is simply being phased out technologically, and the losses for USPS reflect that.
imo the postal service is more reliable than even the courier agencies. i have received six-figure-worth shipments via usps dozens of times with impeccable service.
Theory of OP. Oranges are a fruit. Oranges taste bad. Apples are a fruit. Hence apples taste bad. I sense a fail in there somewhere.
Isn't it obvious? Seriously, I have no clue either. :grin: I will say that I finally agree with something you say, Mojoman. I'm all for a three day delivery schedule for mail. I only check my mail about once every 10 days and I only do it that often because it overflows my mail box after that and they halt delivery to my house.
I believe this is the first time I've ever agreed with you on anything, MojoMan. I wouldn't mind waiting an extra day or so for all my junk mail.
Isn't the healthcare plan supposed to be "self sufficient" as well? Yea, we'll see how that turns out.
You complain about the unemployment rate rising, then suggest something that would raise it even further. Not that I disagree with the suggestion, I'm just pointing it out.
If you haven't noticed, the Internet is phasing out hand-delivered mail. What, pray tell, is going to phase out health care?
Kramer, handing out anti-mail pamphlets: "Here you go. Mail is evil. Pass it on. Hey, mail blows. Fax it to a friend." Woman: "Why does this dummy have a bucket on its head?" Kramer: "Because we're blind to their tyranny." Woman: "Then shouldn't you be wearing the bucket?" Kramer: "Yeah. Move along, Betty."
The document shipping industry, the entire print industry, including paper production, etc are all having trouble adjusting to the information technology changes of the last 15 years. so if you're going to rip the gov't for that, you have to rip private industry as well.
Of course it would probably be a good idea to privatize the USPS service as well. I would have hoped that went without saying.
The post office is failing because it's facing competition from the internet. Wouldn't it be great if competition would run a gov't sponsored healthcare plan out of business???? I say, let's go that route.
No. I do not think we should scrap the post office either. However it would be more effective in terms of cost and service quality if Medicare and VA Healthcare were managed by private companies, and regulated by the government. Elderly people may "like" Medicare services, but Medicare currently has an unfunded liability of $38 Trillion dollars. That is "Trillion" with a T, not "Billion" with a B. Also, doctors are increasingly refusing to serve medicare patients because of inadequate reimbursements. Needless to say, this is not a sustainable arrangement. But it is typical of the performance of government run service organizations. The U.S. Government is on a path heading towards bankruptcy, and Medicare is leading the way. The VA program is in a similarly unsustainable financial condition. The unbelievably poor financial state of these two programs is one of the most obvious and most powerful arguments against any further involvement of the U.S government in the operations of these kinds of programs. The government does a terrible job of controlling costs and delivering high quality services to its citizens. Always has, always will. We cannot afford to indulge this kind of poor stewardship over these kinds of very important and very expensive services any longer. It is not just a question of what people "like". Time to grow up, people.
I would like to do that. Private entities are already competing in that space. It made sense once upon a time for the government to make sure that a parcel service infrastructure was in place. Nowadays, their involvement isn't really necessary. But, I am a big fan of the US Postal Service. Much cheaper than the private competition.
