Obama: "USPS should take over FedEx and UPS"

[steeltoe]

Yes, what a ridiculous statement. So, why is everyone afraid of the "public option"? Apparently insurance companies are afraid to compete with the government. Why are we at Fedex and UPS not afraid of competing with the USPS? Because when you get past the surface of the statement, that's where the real point lies.

We are not afraid of the "public option". We are afraid of no option at all. The President claims that we can keep our own doctors if we are happy with them. Sure we can, until UPS drops our insurance benefits because it is cheaper for them to pay a penalty than it is to offer the benefits.

 

[bbsam]

We are not afraid of the "public option". We are afraid of no option at all. The President claims that we can keep our own doctors if we are happy with them. Sure we can, until UPS drops our insurance benefits because it is cheaper for them to pay a penalty than it is to offer the benefits.

The Teamsters would let them do that? What makes you think that day is not coming anyway? And you say that you are afraid of no option. What about those already in that position? Preexisting conditions, unaffordable, that kind of thing. Do you just shrug your shoulders and say "sucks to be them"? It is fine if that's the case, but I think it ignores the reality that the system is unsustainable and getting worse by the day. What portion of the insured have to fall to the uninsured for UPS to finally say that the increase cost is simply too much?

 

[Camping Nana]

Did he just say what I think he said? In a nut shell, the private sector is doing just fine, it is the goverment sector that has all the problems. How in the world does he think nationalized healthcare is going to be any different.

That's what I got out of it......... Excuse me, but the man is......(edited before posting....)

 

[MrFedEx]

This is more about defeating Obama than it is about health care or impending "socialism". Arch-conservatives can't stand the idea that they are no longer in power and (OMG!!!), THE PRESIDENT IS BLACK!!! Race is a big part of this, but the Republicans can't acknowledge it for obvious reasons. They want to take him down and could care less about this country.

Add-in the fact that we now have a BROWN PERSON on the Supreme Court....they're going crazy.

 

[Kraetos]

He didn't even say it, and everyone is drawing "conclusions". This is like the "end of life" counseling sessions that were originally going to be part of the health plan and covered by Medicare. Suddenly, idiots like Sarah Palin were claiming that Obama was promoting "death panels", euthaniztion of the elderly etc. Are Republicans retarded, or just stupid?

Just a guess. You probably think Palin is one smart cookie, "don't ya know it". I thought so.

Meh, I knew a slimy liberal would slither into this post somehow You sound exactly like MSNBC...

 

[FedEX 4 Life]

This is more about defeating Obama than it is about health care or impending "socialism". Arch-conservatives can't stand the idea that they are no longer in power and (OMG!!!), THE PRESIDENT IS BLACK!!! Race is a big part of this, but the Republicans can't acknowledge it for obvious reasons. They want to take him down and could care less about this country.

Add-in the fact that we now have a BROWN PERSON on the Supreme Court....they're going crazy.

*************This has nothing to do with race.He wants to completely overhaul out healthcare system without even explaining it.Basically telling us we should trust him that it will work.Every govt run agency is dreadful and we should believe it should work?

Are you kidding me?Do you and Obama think we are that dumb?

Who the hell is going to pay for it?

Atleast answer that for me please.Its a simple question.

 

[Osprey413]

You pay for it. And I pay for it. And UPS pays for it. And every other honest citizen pays for it.

Because in the Socialist States of America you don't own health insurance, health insurance own you!

 

[FedEX 4 Life]

I might have a better opinion on this matter if they explained how it would work and who would pay for it.Is that too much to ask?It looks to me like they just write this stuff up and vote on it before reading whats in it.

 

[Buffaloaf]

This is more about defeating Obama than it is about health care or impending "socialism". Arch-conservatives can't stand the idea that they are no longer in power and (OMG!!!), THE PRESIDENT IS BLACK!!! Race is a big part of this, but the Republicans can't acknowledge it for obvious reasons. They want to take him down and could care less about this country.

Add-in the fact that we now have a BROWN PERSON on the Supreme Court....they're going crazy.

I don't think it's a matter of race; it's a matter of power and profit. People that oppose a public healthcare option either don't understand it because they are too lazy to read the legislation that is available for everyone to read or because they believe that their personal taxes will increase dramatically in order to support the public option.

At any rate, I think that a large number of people are not seeing the big picture when it comes to nationalized health care. One thing is that it will create a large number of blue collar and white collar jobs. We are not going to have 50 million more people covered under insurance and not have the same number of hospitals, nurses, and doctors. There will need to be nearly twice as many hospitals and clinics, which would create plenty of work for construction, freight, manufacturing suppliers, janitors, clerks, and, of course, health professionals. The more people that are paying taxes (because they are not unemployed and/or are working a better job) the larger pool of money we have to draw from in order to pay off bills. That's just one important thing that I think often gets overlooked.

Another thing that I think is important is this: We know at UPS that we do a better job of managing ourselves than USPS. As it is, Insurance Companies are not managing themselves well and have caused the problem of soaring insurance rates. By bringing in a public option it will cause two things to either happen: 1. The public option will be far better than the private option and no one will want to use private insurance anymore; or 2. The public option will fail / be mediocre and in order to compete with it, the private option will become leaner and meaner (because they will have REAL competition for the first time) and will find a way to adapt to the public option. UPS has managed to exist for a long time with the public option (USPS), so why shouldn't private insurance? If private insurance is truly providing a better service for people, then it will be able to survive just as UPS / FedEx has. The last union contract saw a reduction in health care benefits for Teamsters (takes a year or whatever to get health care); if health care costs continue to increase (Management saw their contributions to health benefits nearly deouble) it's only a matter of time before the negotiated health care benefit with no contribution by union employees gets approached by the company. I would ventre to guess that the contribution that UPS pays on a weekly basis for a Part-time employees health care is more than what they make in a week in pay. During a time right now while production is a huge concern, many people take unpaid days off. But if UPS is paying for someone's health care (and their health care is more expensive than the cost of working them); what is the point of having them not work and having them on payroll. The company is losing money even though the production numbers say it's making the goal. At any rate, I think that we are on a very slippery slope in health care and that without reform, it will begin to affect those who have insurance (for those that havn't already had it affect them). Just something to think about.

 

[tonyexpress]

This is more about defeating Obama than it is about health care or impending "socialism". Arch-conservatives can't stand the idea that they are no longer in power and (OMG!!!), THE PRESIDENT IS BLACK!!! Race is a big part of this, but the Republicans can't acknowledge it for obvious reasons. They want to take him down and could care less about this country.

Add-in the fact that we now have a BROWN PERSON on the Supreme Court....they're going crazy.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised as this is what you hear in the media for the most part.

First of all who is bringing up race here??

Also if health care brings down Obama it's because the people don't want his Government version of running things no matter how many town hall meetings he has.

Here's an article written by a black man which expresses his view of both the black and brown issues you've brought up...

The Other ‘Hispanic’ Nominee

Democrats market themselves as the party of compassion and sensitivity to racial and ethnic minorities. But they do so only selectively. A Republican nominee like Miguel Estrada becomes a "sellout" or a "Tio Taco." Similarly, Justice Clarence Thomas, following his nomination by then-President George Herbert Walker Bush, found himself caricatured on the cover of a national black magazine as a mammy-style, handkerchief-capped "Uncle Thomas."

"Hispanic pride" and "overcoming obstacles" only count when the "good guys" say so.

 

[whiskey]

Man, how sweet would it be to have one of those cushy USPS (or Canada Post here) jobs.

90% of their employees are actually done in an 8 hour day UNDER 8 hours up here. Why? Because every 2 years (unlike UPS) their supervisors walk or driver the route. If they can't do it in 8 hours it gets fixed. What does that mean? You get REWARDED for doing your job well (holy crap, what a concept!) by getting paid for 8 hours even if you're done in 7. It also means that the government postal system (at least in Canada) is more intelligent in running it's company AND dealing with their employees then UPS is...Yes, that means the government supervisors are smarter then our supervisors, scary, isn't it?

The last time study on my route was done in 1990.

 

[MrFedEx]

*************This has nothing to do with race.He wants to completely overhaul out healthcare system without even explaining it.Basically telling us we should trust him that it will work.Every govt run agency is dreadful and we should believe it should work?

Are you kidding me?Do you and Obama think we are that dumb?

Who the hell is going to pay for it?

Atleast answer that for me please.Its a simple question.

I think you're that dumb...I can't speak for Obama. And all of you older Republicans out there....stop using Medicare because it is "socialized" medicine. Also, please start picketing to disband your local police and fire departments, which are also government run. That goes for the military as well.

You are already paying for it. Whenever CIGNA denies your claim you pay out-of-pocket and you pay for free emergency room care for the uninsured through higher premiums and sky-high medical bills.

The insurance companies are health care deniers for the most part, and enrich themselves by cherry-picking clients and doing their best to NOT provide care. Is it any wonder they are so profitable?

For all you beleivers in the Free Market out there. Why not let the insurance companies compete against a public option? After all, "competition" always works, right? CIGNA, AETNA and the rest of them want the status quo preserved so they can keep picking your pockets clean. They don't want a free market...they want a protected market, and all of you useful idiots out there proclaiming impending socialism are playing right into their hands.

Obama is far from perfect, but at least he's trying to make some changes that make sense.

 

[MrFedEx]

I guess I shouldn't be surprised as this is what you hear in the media for the most part.

First of all who is bringing up race here??

Also if health care brings down Obama it's because the people don't want his Government version of running things no matter how many town hall meetings he has.

Here's an article written by a black man which expresses his view of both the black and brown issues you've brought up...

The Other ‘Hispanic’ Nominee

Democrats market themselves as the party of compassion and sensitivity to racial and ethnic minorities. But they do so only selectively. A Republican nominee like Miguel Estrada becomes a "sellout" or a "Tio Taco." Similarly, Justice Clarence Thomas, following his nomination by then-President George Herbert Walker Bush, found himself caricatured on the cover of a national black magazine as a mammy-style, handkerchief-capped "Uncle Thomas."

"Hispanic pride" and "overcoming obstacles" only count when the "good guys" say so.

Larry Elder is a well-known conservative radio host. I wouldn't expect him to provide anything but a Republican view of things. He's also something of an OREO. The "people" aren't always what you think. Ever hear of Dick Army's organization? Many "grassroots" protestors are anything but grassroots....they're plants.

The race issue is very thinly veiled, particularly when you listen to conservative commentators like Limbaugh, Savage and anything on FOX. Clarence Thomas was probably the least-qualified candidate ever nominated to the Supreme Court yet he got the post, primarily because of his conservative values. Republicans are upset that Sotomayer is Hispanic and a liberal. If she was pro-abortion and NRA all the way they wouldn't have as much of a problem with her, but it would have been no problem at all if she was white.

 

[Backlasher]

Exactly.USPS has all the advantages and none of the disadvantages we have and they still suck.

You guys forgot to take in concideration that USPS is under priced in their service. That's why their not profitable. They're management is excellent and service is great. They have the exact same route and loop in their routes which greatly increases reliability and low margin of error because of this. Efficiency great, They work at a realistic pace with ideal commit times.

It's all about their low rates and loss of volumn in letters. Imagine you new exactly what address you would be at any giving time of any giving day cause your route never changes.

 

[Dads 99]

They're management is excellent and service is great. .

I hope you are kidding.Thier service is terrible.I will never use them again.They lost some imortant packages of mine multiple times.I used them because they were cheaper.


BIG MISTAKE!

 

[Jones]

Interesting article:

Is ANY Health Insurance a Good Idea?

While there is a battle raging over the "public option," a kind of Medicare for all, there is so much disinformation and so many outright lies being spewed into the air, there some fundamental truths that are being lost. Here are a few facts for anyone who still cares about facts.
There are roughly four ways countries can run their health systems, to wit:

1. Nationalized medicine
2. National health insurance
3. Regulated fee-for-service medicine
4. Unregulated fee-for-service medicine

Some countries have one or the other. The U.S. has all four. First, there is nationalized medicine. The British National Health Service operates like this. The government runs the hospitals and pays the doctors, who are government employees. Despite what some tea-baggers are yelling at the tops of their collective lungs, none of the five bills floating around Congress propose anything remotely like this. It would be totally un-American--except for our troops, all of whom we support and want to give the best care to. The Veterans Administration runs something pretty close to this, with government-run hospitals and care. While some failures have been well documented, few veterans are calling for the system to be chucked out as socialism in disguise.
Second, there is national health insurance. This is what Canada has. Canadian doctors and hospitals are private (or run by local or provincial governments). Basically, the system is fee-for-service, but with everyone covered by the provincial governments but with federal money in some cases. In other words, the insurance system has been nationalized but the medical system itself is largely private. What the government does is pay the bills. Medicare works like this.
Third, there are countries where the system is entirely private (e.g. Switzerland, as Paul Krugman pointed out today). Another example is The Netherlands, which Krugman didn't mention and which illustrates model 3 very clearly. The government's role there is largely to set the ground rounds and make sure they are enforced. In a nutshell, the key rules are:

• Nobody forces any company to offer health insurance. They do it only if they can make a profit on it.
• Health insurance companies must offer a basic plan covering a list of government-mandated costs (doctors, hospitals, etc.). They can't say: we cover all surgical costs--and then in tiny fine print explain "But only when the operation is performed by a barber-surgeon using leeches"
• Companies must insure anybody who shows up for the same price, regardless of medical history
• All companies operate nationally, set their own prices, and compete on price
• There is an individual mandate; anyone not insured must pay a tax of about what the basic plan costs
• For items not covered (e.g., alternative medicine), companies can do whatever they want
• Employers can bargain with companies to get small (e.g., 10%) discounts for their employees

The fact that all companies operate nationally and employers play only a small role means there is real competition, which provides something of a brake on premiums. The Massachusetts health system is similar to this.
Fourth, there is the fully free-market based system, where individuals, insurance companies, and health providers can pretty much do whatever they want to. Most of the U.S. falls under this regime.
But with all the noise about the public option, almost no one asks the most fundamental question of all: "Is insurance even the right model to think about for health care?" At least not until David Goldhill wrote a must-read article in The Atlantic. Goldhill's point is that the purpose of insurance is to pool large number of people together and get them to pay small premiums to cover a catastrophic event that will not happen to most of them. As an example, car insurance covers the costs of accidents, which most people don't have very often. No company offers full automotive insurance that covers accidents, gas, routine maintenance, parking fees, new tires, and all other automotive-related costs. Instead, individuals buy these other items on the open market and as a result tend to look at the price and quality of the products and services closely. Fire insurance is another example of true insurance--pooled risk against an unlikely event.
Goldhill argues that the fundamental problem with the U.S. health system is that since consumers largely do not pay for their own medical expenses, they don't care how much they cost. This simple fact leads to excessive costs, bloated bureaucracies, and inefficent delivery. Consumers think that medical services are free, since some distant and much-hated insurance company is paying for most of them, so they never weigh need vs. cost. The employer-based health care system is basically due to a mistake Congress made during World War II. While there were stringent wage and price controls in effect during much of the war, fringe benefits were exempt, so unions (which couldn't demand more cash) demanded free health insurance and got it, and tax free to boot. This bit of history is the root of the problem.
True reform might go something like this. Employers simply get out of the health insurance business altogether and give the $12,000 or so they spend per employee to their employees as more salary. The government enacts laws like The Netherlands has to keep insurance companies honest and make them compete nationally, and then people go out and buy insurance on this newly competitive market. No public option is needed. If the government chooses as a matter of public policy to subsidize health care, then the first $12,000 (or some other amount) of money anyone spends on health care could be tax deductible, and direct subsidies could be given to poor people (health stamps, sort of like food stamps) to enable them to pay their medical bills.
The intention would be to have health insurance cover only catastrophic illiness with normal medical costs (seeing GPs and specialists and short hospital stays) being paid out of the $12,000 raise now-covered employees get. All of a sudden, people care about how much that MRI costs. Goldhill describes how when his wife needed an MRI, multiple hospitals refused to tell him the cost. If consumers were paying for things like this out of pocket, you betcha they would be telling. Many would be advertising their prices.
Could something like this work? Goldhill talks about LASIK (eye surgery that eliminates the need for glasses). This procedure is almost never covered and there is vigorous free market for it. The cost has dropped ten-fold since it was introduced as clinics are forced to truly compete. If all medical providers had to compete for consumers' business, prices would be driven down, too. The government's main job here would be to certify providers to make sure they met high medical standards and publish the results. Getting a "D" rating wouldn't be good for business and providers would act accordingly. Goldhill's main point is that all the incentives are wrong now so we need to rethink the whole idea of "insurance" as the model (except for catastrophic illness, which is like having a car accident or your house burning down).
The problem with all the bills in Congress now is that none of them attack the problems of bad incentives and the customer being insulated from the cost of what he is demanding. As a result, the percentage of GDP being spent on medical are is only likely to increase and become even less sustainable.
One issue Goldhill doesn't discuss (because it is totally taboo) but is crucial to the debate is the imaginary "death panel" Sarah Palin and Chuck Grassley are against. A huge amount of money is currently being spent to keep Grandma, who is 85 and has Alzheimer's, alive. Families want no expense spared to give her a couple more months--since they are not paying for it. Suppose Goldhill's system were implemented and Grandma, or more likely, her children and grandchildren had to decide how much expensive care she was going to get--knowing that some or all of the care was coming out of their expected inheritance. It is likely that in many cases 85-year-olds with Alzheimer's would not be getting quadruple bypass operations. The family wouldn't stand for it if they were footing (part of) the bill. They would be making god-like judgments about quality of life vs. cost and probably in many cases would be a lot stricter than any imaginary government death panels would be.
If you have gotten this far, now go read the article. Agree or disagree, it certainly raises some key points about whether insurance is the right model here.

source

 

[TechGrrl]

Interesting article:
source
Third, there are countries where the system is entirely private (e.g. Switzerland, as Paul Krugman pointed out today). Another example is The Netherlands, which Krugman didn't mention and which illustrates model 3 very clearly. The government's role there is largely to set the ground rules and make sure they are enforced. In a nutshell, the key rules are:

• Nobody forces any company to offer health insurance. They do it only if they can make a profit on it.
• Health insurance companies must offer a basic plan covering a list of government-mandated costs (doctors, hospitals, etc.). They can't say: we cover all surgical costs--and then in tiny fine print explain "But only when the operation is performed by a barber-surgeon using leeches"
• Companies must insure anybody who shows up for the same price, regardless of medical history
• All companies operate nationally, set their own prices, and compete on price
• There is an individual mandate; anyone not insured must pay a tax of about what the basic plan costs
• For items not covered (e.g., alternative medicine), companies can do whatever they want
• Employers can bargain with companies to get small (e.g., 10%) discounts for their employees

The fact that all companies operate nationally and employers play only a small role means there is real competition, which provides something of a brake on premiums. The Massachusetts health system is similar to this.

I could live with a plan like this. I would include regulation that stated that all health care providers have a price list for standard procedures: MRI, CAT scan, PET Scan, Regular Physical that includes standard blood work, EKG, and cancer screening for breast (breast manipulation and mammogram) and colon cancer. (Stool sample, not colonoscopy, unless anomalies show up) and that these price lists must be provided on demand.

One modification I think would need to be made: although the insurance companies could compete nationally, their price lists might have to reflect regional differences. The Netherlands is a small, homogeneous country, the US is not.

I would also modify the enabling legislation for Medicare Part D (drug plans) to state that the government will reimburse drug prices as negotiated by the VA. Right now, Part D is a huge giveaway to Pharma. Why do all the right wing conservative free market idealogues think that NOT NEGOTIATING price makes any sense? Oh, because that gives them a free slurp at the government trough! Socialized medicine is OKAY as long as corporations can profit from it.

 

[TechGrrl]

Interesting article:
source

Why don't you post this link, and the link to the Atlantic article on the "Government Healthcare" thread?