For the people who think a public healthcare option will endanger traditional health insurance...

[texasfanboy]

...please answer the following:

1) When did the US Postal Service drive FedEx and UPS out of business?

2) When did you close your 401k or IRA because Social Security was enough?

3) When did Medicare become good enough for retired individuals that they needed to drop all other health coverage?

Comments

[dbroussa]

1) Who delivers standard letters? The USPS...why? Because they are subsidized by the taxpayers and no one can compete with a $.42 flat fee to send a letter anywhere in the US. If it was private it might be much cheaper to send it locally or in state and much more expensive to send it to say...Alaska. So the gov't subsidizes the program and it works as a public service. In fact the USPS uses FedEx to ship its overnight overseas packages. The point is that UPS and FedEx are not direct competitors with the USPS, they are actually niche competitors in a fairly lucrative market (overnight and priority delivery). They compete on their service even though the USPS is cheaper (being subsidized) because their service is superior and people can afford to spend $40 to ship something from San Antonio to Houston early AM priority to get their house closed. Now extrapolate that to Health Insurance. Average transaction cost for a mail parcel is likely less then $1 (when you realize that far more mail is sent at first class rates ($.42) then

try # 2

[dbroussa]

1) Who delivers standard letters? The USPS...why? Because they are subsidized by the taxpayers and no one can compete with a $.42 flat fee to send a letter anywhere in the US. If it was private it might be much cheaper to send it locally or in state and much more expensive to send it to say...Alaska. So the gov't subsidizes the program and it works as a public service. In fact the USPS uses FedEx to ship its overnight overseas packages. The point is that UPS and FedEx are not direct competitors with the USPS, they are actually niche competitors in a fairly lucrative market (overnight and priority delivery). They compete on their service even though the USPS is cheaper (being subsidized) because their service is superior and people can afford to spend $40 to ship something from San Antonio to Houston early AM priority to get their house closed. Now extrapolate that to Health Insurance. Average transaction cost for a mail parcel is likely less then $1 (when you realize that far more mail is sent at first class rates ($.42) then

[hobbitt]

Hmm...so what you are saying is that the private sector can do better?

Fed ex started a standard for delivery.

I can make a better investment if instead of Social Security, I took the money out and invested it myself. And that would be investment, remember the Fica money out of your and my paycheck goes directly to people...like my dad who is retired.

I can easily see a law forcing us to use government health care.