"People say - well how can a private company compete against the government? If you think about it uh uh uh. . . ."UPS and FED Ex are doing just fine, alright uh uh naw they are. . . its the Post Office that's always in trouble!"
washingtonexaminer.com — With a few hours' reflection, it's become clear that Barack Obama's reference to the U.S. Postal Service at yesterday's health care town hall was the most revealing, and damaging, thing the president has said in the entire health care debate.
Explaining why he believes a public option would not crowd out and ultimately eliminate private insurance, Obama said, "My answer is that if the private insurance companies are providing a good bargain, and if the public option has to be self-sustaining…then I think private insurers should be able to compete. They do it all the time. I mean, if you think about it, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right? No, they are. It's the Post Office that's always having problems."
In one brief phrase, Obama planted the image in the minds of millions of people: Government health care = Post Office. Everyone has had the pleasant experience of waiting in line at the Post Office, and now Obama, whose intention was to dispel doubts about increasing government's role in health care, has rhetorically linked health care reform with the Post Office experience. If Republicans can't make something of that, they don't deserve to be called the opposition party.
The Heritage Foundation has done a good job telling us just how wrong-headed Obama's Post Office remark was. For example, private carriers are forbidden by law from delivering first-class mail to your home; the Postal Service loses billions of dollars each year; the Postmaster General complains that he doesn't have the "tools" to run the Postal Service like a business. But in the end, it is the image that Obama has put into the heads of millions of Americans, the one in which government health care looks like the Post Office, that could do grievous damage to the president's dream of a government health care makeover.
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The government run Post Office loses billions of your tax dollars a year, and they are contemplating not delivering mail on Saturdays due to severe financial troubles. Will Obamacare cause hospitals to be shutting down on Saturdays to save money?
Government run Health Care. . . .with the efficiency of the Post Office and the compassion of the IRS
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Obamas-Post-Office-health-care-disaster-53038002.html
