I decided to write a letter to an old friend from Crabapple Cove, Maine. With almost anybody else, I would send an email, but he's a geezer whom I am fairly certain is computer illiterate. So I hand-wrote a three page letter, and I considered how to send it. For convenience, I wanted to ensure the letter would be personally delivered to his house. And to have the letter picked up at mine.
I called Fedex and asked them what it would cost to send a letter from my house in Phoenix to Crabapple Cove, Maine that would get there sometime in the next few days. Cost: $7.36 plus $2.97 to have the letter picked up. Total charge, a little over $10.
A bit pricey, I thought. But believing in the power of competition, I next called UPS. They might, after all, be a little cheaper than the "absolutely, positively" people. They also drive around in ugly brown trucks and obviously never spent the money Fedex did developing a spiffy logo. I posed the same question to UPS. The response: $13.20, plus another $4.16 for a pickup at my house. Total: over $17.
What of the "public option?" I had heard a lot about how private industry does everything better than the government, and how they couldn't much be trusted to do anything. I nevertheless called the U.S. Post Office and posed them the same question. The response: 44 cents -- and no charge for a personal pickup at my house.
So, the inefficient, bloated, generally good-for-nothing government-run public option: wanted to charge me 44 cents. And the presumably efficient, competitive, private-sector options: over $10+ and $17+.
This public option looks pretty good.
Fedex and UPS are fine companies. As private corporations, their goal is to maximize revenue for their shareholders. They actually do some things better and are occasionally even cheaper than the post office. But, because their raison d'etre is maximizing net revenue, they have no interest whatsoever in doing anything for 44 cents.
The Post Office, as a public entity, has a different objective: to provide an essential service to the public at the lowest possible cost. So they are willing to deliver a document door-to-door 3,000 miles in two or three days for 44 cents. And they are mandated not to require a government subsidy. All this despite the fact that email and the internet has caused the amount of first class mail running through the United States Post Office to decline every year. Pretty tough business conditions. And yet, they have kept their costs amazingly low -- without a government subsidy. While they have been the butt of many jokes over the years, some even deserved, they have been able to innovate, mechanize, and streamline their operations to maintain costs, even in the face of an inevitably declining volume. I think, in part, because the serving the public good, rather than maximizing their profits, is their primary core value.
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Know any corporatio
I propose a study to determine the actual cost an individual spends on health care premiums to a for profit insurance company. This would be the average cost to an individual for a comprehens
Moreover, taxes are based on income and ability to pay, but would offer comprehens
Sure, they seem to run their business on the cheap. Yet the GAO estimates the premium health insurance benefits that postal workers enjoy exceed the health benefits provided to other federal employees to the tune of $500 million a year.
This is exactly what's wrong with government run anything: excess, waste, ineffectiv
This article does put something into perspectiv
But NOOO-ooo, you folks would be screaming bloody murder about your "taxes" going up if they tried to do that.
I've been in business for over thirty years and I probably sent my first piece of mail thirty years before that. I think I could count on one hand the number of letters the post office has lost and like the man said, 99+% of the time the letter is delivered in a couple of days.
I'm willing to give the government a chance to try its hand at running a health insurance organizati
Also, we all have a vested interest in keeping a functionin
"ANY NATION THAT PROFESSES TO BE KNOWN AS CIVIL OR MORAL SHOULD PROVIDE AT LEAST BASIC HEALTH CARE TO ALL OF IT'S CITIZENS"-
We in the US are way behind on this basic moral truism. Why????
Dr. Rick Lippin
Southampto
Because many of us seem to think that it's a "socialist
Because many of us don't realize how little power we each, individual
Because many of us are afraid of something new?
Because many of us are afraid that somebody else in the world may have better answers to their problems than we have for ours?
Because many of us are selfish?
I don't know the answer to your question Dr. Lippin, but I wish we could figure it out. Thanks for caring.
Making high quality health care easily available for consumers and employers while saving taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars annually is easy for everyone to understand
Nobody can collect the money to pay for health care as cheaply as the government can by using a national sales tax instead of insurance companies, and nobody can deliver high quality care and medication
Everyone choosing public care could have it no restrictio
Employers who select public care for their employees would not be required to pay for or have any further involvemen
A National Health Care System could also take over states and local government
We would save hundreds of billions annually, while being morally fair, operating the world’s best combinatio
Interestin
The only thing that should be considered is if the government
I wish someone would create an analysis of the average cost of premiums for comprehens
I suspect that the total cost of premiums to for-profit insurance companies for "universal health care" would be staggering and would dwarf the total health care taxes of any government "single payer health care plan".
People would have to be completely devoid of reason not to choose the cheapest way to get comprehens