Obama: ‘It's the Post Office That's Always Having Problems'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XTi-WdOu2s&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ebreitbart%2Etv%2Fobama%2Dits%2Dthe%2Dpost%2Doffice%2Dthats%2Dalways%2Dhaving%2Dproblems%2F&feature=player_embedded
What is wrong with this picture?
If UPS and FedEx can do a better job of delivering packages than the Post Office, If the Post Office is always having problems.,
Why on earth would we want to trust the US Government with our health care?
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M$4 Answers
However, there is another well known angle. Would you want the insurance companies delivering your mail?
Think about it. No delivery to Montana, that's not profitable because everyone is too far apart. No delivery unless you can prove you really needed the mail. Use the mail too much, you get dropped. No mail unless you are employed at a large company or rich. etc.
The government has to provide the services that are not profitable, whether it's defense or business regulation or police or, it is now clear, universal health care.
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M$
We also trust our government with roads, and police, and fire departments, and educating our children, and negotiating with other countries, with national security, with transportation, and with all sorts of other aspects of our daily lives. And yet we don't live in a socialist nightmare world. In fact, many of these programs are POPULAR.
(There's certainly not been a major, publicly-backed push to eradicate Medicare that I can recall in my 30 years of life. Even those politicians who are totally ideologically opposed to these sorts of government programs don't dare oppose Medicare for fear of upsetting their constituents.)
Is the fact that sometimes you have to wait 10 minutes at the Post Office to mail your package a solid argument against extending health insurance to underprivileged Americans? Not really, to my mind...And in fact, the Post Office vs. FedEx argument provides a good model for how private and public insurance options can co-exist. The fact that there's a Post Office doesn't mean there can't also be a DHL. They provide different options and give consumers a choice, while simultaneously guaranteeing that everyone who needs it can mail a package for a nominal fee.
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Good answer. Most people need to post things now and again, but not everyone can afford FedEx, and it will never be worth FedEx's while to provide a service that reaches everyone.
In countries that have universal healthcare, like those commie heartlands Canada, England and Switzerland, people can still pay for private sector options that give extra fast service and extra comfort. What they don't have to worry about it is being financially crippled if they get some devastating long-term condition.
Unfortunately a lot of Americans seem to be under the impression that Canadians and Brits are dying like flies, when in fact they have just as good or better health outcomes as the US, while paying a heck of a lot less for the privilege.
I guess we'll find out in the next few months whether Amercia is actually capable of intelligently tackling tough and important problems.
@philipy. How healthy these other countries are is not the point. The point is this healthcare will be funded by taxes and other government money, which requires all of us to pay in wether we like it or not. And why wouldn't it be worth it for FedEx to give service to more people. If theirs a demand, of course they would.
At any rate, if you Google American healthcare compared to other countries, you will find a chart that shows America being #1 by way of the COST of healthcare, but only 37th by way of quality of care. What does that tell you? This is really a no-brainer, but everyone is so worried about that little word "socialism," they can't see the truth through their own fears.
By the way, to the poster above, the post office is losing money now because of the internet and e-mail, not private companies. Ask any postal employee and they will tell you this.
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the post office does lose money because of private companies. They were struggling a while before email started up. That made things worse for them. Whats strange is the post office is cheaper to ship with then UPS or fedex, but they lose billions a year, and since thats tax money its really not cheaper, we're paying the difference anyways.
The post office had a backlog because they were the only one allowed to sort mail.
No, the internet has been the main culprit. FedEx and UPS actually started up as a way to take care of the backlog the postoffice had. The postoffice was unable to keep up. Then, back in the mid-90's, the internet started taking off, and subsequently e-mail, and the postoffice has been going down ever since. In fact, I just had a discussion about that two weeks ago with my local post master. She said, "E-mail is killing us."
Public education is not so good, and it keeps getting more expensive, so why expand the government in to this role. Health insurance providers are only allowed to operate within state lines. Let them operate in all 50 states, and that will give everyone the options Obama keeps talking about.
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@jammons. This is a good point. Obama keeps talking about so many people being uninsured. Do they need to be? Maybe they're young and healthy. Maybe they make money and don't need insurance, they can just pay for it out of pocket. Car insurance is a good example. Everyone who has a car MUST buy car insurance. So when you look at car insurance prices theirs not a big difference in prices between companies. Whats the incentive to drop the price, you have to buy it no matter what. Government gets involved in the free market, screws it up, and then claims capitalism doesn't work.
@samid Give some examples of when poor people do the dirty work of the privileged. The economy is not a pie, theres not a limited amount to go around. Someone being rich doesn't cause someone else to be poor. I never claimed poor people were lazy or ignorant.
The reason insurance companies have to deny so many people is because of government regulation. There is no reasons for them to refuse to take someone's money in a free market.
Like in your Montana example, maybe we pay more for living out in the middle of nowhere, but that makes sense, it takes more man hours to deliver out there. If the government regulated how much private shippers could charge to below this rate, they would stop shipping to Montana.
This has happened to insurance. Insurance companies are limited in what they can charge even the most obese, chain smoking, diabetic people, so rather than charge them extra for their increased risk, they simply won't insure them. To do otherwise would risk bankruptcy for the company which would lead to lost jobs, unpayable insurance claims, and lost insurance for many.
You are comparing apples to oranges. First of all, the reason car insurance rates are so low is because the people who dip into that are mere auto mechanics. They aren't well paid. It's a blue collar job basically. The people who dip into the health insurance pool are doctors, highly paid, who also have to pay high malpractice insurance rates.
You also asked if all those people need to be insured. I can assure you the reason they aren't insured has nothing to do with having all the money they need. It has to do with the exact opposite. In that case, do the currently insured need to be insured? If health insurance is so unnecessary, why not just do away with health insurance altogether and when you die, you die.
The main problem I have with the arguments against health insurance is that we are dealing with more inequality in our nation. It's no longer about race or gender. Now it's about socioeconomic status, and that's just as bad, because I can assure you those making salaries below the poverty line are working twice as hard and doing twice as much as those who have good, white collar jobs. It's just not right. Society wants to desensitize us by making it seem that poor people are poor because they are lazy or ignorant. That's not the case. We will always have and always need poor people. It's just not possible to have our kind of capitalistic society without having poor people who do the dirty work for the privileged. Isn't it about time we start making sure they are at least healthy? Come on!
You want examples of when poor people do the dirty work of the privileged? Look out your window!!!!!!!! We are talking about anybody making less than $250,000 per year, which is pretty much everybody save a very small percentage. You have auto repairs, changing oil, changing tires, restaurant employees, hair dressers, masonry workers, lawn maintanence, housekeeping, clerks in stores, grave diggers, the list goes on and on and on and on and on.
We cannot afford as a nation to pay everybody a large salary (so, actually, yes, there is a limit to how much goes around, unless you want Obama boy to borrow more from China!), so only the jobs that require a lot of training (like lawyers and doctors) get the large salaries. So, yes, we will always need "poor people." There's no way around it unless all businesses suddenly decide to be super generous and give all their workers raises and cut their own profits coming into their own wallets, which AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN! The poor actually rule this country by majority, but money talks and BS walks. So, for being the majority, the poor actually have less of a voice than the much smaller percentage of those making large amounts of money. Lobbyists are expensive you know!
As for your other question, there is no reason for a person with enough money to pay for health insurance to not purchase it. That would be idiotic to say the least. It would be idiotic to have, let's say, $100,000 in the bank and NOT buy health insurance. Why would anyone do that? So they can take the chance of getting into an accident and having to spend that entire $100,000 (their entire savings) on a week's worth of hospital stay? That would be ludicrous! The more sane option would be to buy really good health insurance for $400 per month and keep your money in the bank. It's a no-brainer. That way you are covered if a something catastrophic happens.
@samid "I can assure you the reason they aren't insured has nothing to do with having all the money they need." How could you possibly be sure of this.
http://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=6366
Great answer! You are right. In a free market economy, only those deemed "worth it" are taken care of and everyone else can p*ss off. That's not Christian-like now is it?
@samid. Obama keeps borrowing from the chinese because government keeps spending more and more. The money people make is related to the GDP, which has been flat or down for a little bit now. Do you not recognize a middle class. Its not just rich and poor. Not everyone who makes under $250k is poor. I can tell your one of these people who thinks physical labor is the most noble work.