Aug 12 2009
Obamacare: Just Like The Post Office
There are numerous people commenting on President Obama’s massive blunder yesterday noting how FedEx and UPS (the private sector) out performs the United States Post Office (which runs constantly with massive debt and is isolated by law from private competition) as an analogy to government run Obamacare. The common theme is to note how a government run program is costly, performs worse and cost more than any private endeavors.
President Obama firmly attached the stigma of the post office to Obamacare and the liberal bills in the House. He killed his own initiative with that one inexperienced and clumsy statement. He admitted openly the government could not compete with the current health care industry on quality or cost.Â
One commenter who also saw the warning signs yesterday, before his big blunder, was liberal columnist Camille Paglia:
Having said that, I must confess my dismay bordering on horror at the amateurism of the White House apparatus for domestic policy. When will heads start to roll? I was glad to see the White House counsel booted, as well as Michelle Obama’s chief of staff, and hope it’s a harbinger of things to come. Except for that wily fox, David Axelrod, who could charm gold threads out of moonbeams, Obama seems to be surrounded by juvenile tinhorns, bumbling mediocrities and crass bully boys.
Case in point: the administration’s grotesque mishandling of healthcare reform, one of the most vital issues facing the nation.Â
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There is plenty of blame to go around. Obama’s aggressive endorsement of a healthcare plan that does not even exist yet, except in five competing, fluctuating drafts, makes Washington seem like Cloud Cuckoo Land. The president is promoting the most colossal, brazen bait-and-switch operation since the Bush administration snookered the country into invading Iraq with apocalyptic visions of mushroom clouds over American cities.
You can keep your doctor; you can keep your insurance, if you’re happy with it, Obama keeps assuring us in soothing, lullaby tones. Oh, really? And what if my doctor is not the one appointed by the new government medical boards for ruling on my access to tests and specialists? And what if my insurance company goes belly up because of undercutting by its government-bankrolled competitor? Face it: Virtually all nationalized health systems, neither nourished nor updated by profit-driven private investment, eventually lead to rationing.
I just don’t get it. Why the insane rush to pass a bill, any bill, in three weeks? And why such an abject failure by the Obama administration to present the issues to the public in a rational, detailed, informational way? The U.S. is gigantic; many of our states are bigger than whole European nations. The bureaucracy required to institute and manage a nationalized health system here would be Byzantine beyond belief and would vampirically absorb whatever savings Obama thinks could be made. And the transition period would be a nightmare of red tape and mammoth screw-ups, which we can ill afford with a faltering economy.
I would say stick a fork in the government run option – but I think the president did that already. More like he stuck a stake through its heart. Americans now have his own assessment of government versus private health care to freely oppose the nonsense that is now in front of the liberal congress.
OK, I need an answer.
The administration says Medicare is a government run program, people like it, it has far less overhead costs then private insurers. See, we can do government run Health Care.
Then why does the Government need to cut $600 billion dollars from this well run, perfect program?
I’d like to think the “public option” is dead enough to stick a fork in it, AJ, but I don’t think the progressive wing of the Dem party will let it go. Ever.
Kathie, Medicare is also almost broke. What then?
I have started checking on each of the people who asked questions at the NH town hall meeting.
As many other sites are now posting about that aspect there are so many potted plants that if they could be converted to bio diesel or ethanol we could meet this years mandate in a heart beat.
Frogg, I forgot to mention that small fact……going broke!
He did the post office boo-boo, along with saying it was a Pug that put in the death panel and AARP supported his plan.
Pug denied plus AARP. Of course I do not believe AARP. If anyone read the comments under that clip of AARP townhall, you would know why they are running at full steam. Their members are canceling and only a fool would sign with them now. They were even flooding the airways yesterday with ads trying to recruit. Fat chance.
Potted plants? Look at today’s WH press. I have been watching these things off and on for years but I think today’s might have taken the Potted Plant Award. GOP should be able to do something with that thing. Gibbs kept repeating how they believed the Pres townhall was representative, yada, yada. The most shocking thing was how many times he repeated the word ‘misinformation’. He then TOLD THEM to take one item and clear up the ‘misinformation’ by writing, reporting. That bunch of potted plants sat there with stupor written all over them. Not sure they were even capable of receiving direct orders. They are that far gone.
If ObamaCare is like the Post Office, what happens when the doctors go “POSTAL” ?
for anyone interested in Sarah Palin – watch the link to breitbart tv on this greenroom site to get an idea as to where the attacks against her have really been coming from.
It’s long, but it’s an astounding piece of investigative journalism. Better than anything else you may watch tonite, guaranteed.
http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2009/08/11/new-questions-emerge-about-anti-palin-blogger-jesse-griffin-aka-gryphen/
I would 100% support the sort of health care reform described in this piece by John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods.
AJ, for the last few days, many times do I try and access this site; it goes into a loop; never timing out. It’s happened on two different computers.
AJ – I think you are too kind to our President by routinely giving him the benefit of the doubt as “inexperienced”. Nothing that has been happening here is due to “inexperience”, it is happening by design.
Lurker, I’ve had the same experience. I’ve wondered if another DOS attack was going on against the site.
(Yet) Another fundamental problem I have with Obamacare is how it dehumanizes people. For example, lets say you have terminal cancer. There is a drug available that gives a 5 year life expectancy only 5% of cases. If you run that through your computer and have some “green eyeshade” looking at the numbers, he will say it isn’t worth spending 100K.
The problem with all of that thinking is that we can not tell ahead of time who that 5% is that gets the 5 years of life. We know we have a 0% chance if we don’t get it and 5% is infinitely better odds than 0%. We give it a try and hope we are one of those 5%. And miracles happen. The only way we know that 5% live longer is because we tried it.
To reduce someone to a result of a statistical analysis and to yank hope from them because they are a long shot is dehumanizing. We know going in that things are not going to be perfect, we know going in that the odds are against us, but people try. People fight. And sometimes miracles happen. Obamacare would reduce us to a mathematical formula as cold as the case on some computer. Humanity isn’t perfect. It doesn’t fit into neat little pigeon holes.
Obamacare reduces everyone to a statistic and it takes control away from us as to what we would choose to do. It doesn’t GIVE us anything. We are perfectly free to choose hospice care now and many do (my Dad did) if we don’t want to go through with a program that would only prolong suffering. But some choose to go for it. And some of those survive. Obama would kill the miracles that happen every day in this country.
[…] (proving President Obama’s accidental truth regarding the comparative operation of the US Post Office to its privately run competition), has not been enough to wake the liberal democrats up to the simple reality that Americans […]