Excellent point, and (as I just discovered today) via Powerline Blog, we ARE forced to use the USPS.
It is against the law for anyone other than the USPS to carry “non-urgent” mail. The private shippers, UPS and FedEx, are only allowed to ship urgent/priority items. I did not know this. Even with that monopoly, and taxpayer subsidies, the USPS is pretty much broke. Shocking, I know.
Think of government-run health care as your “non-urgent” health care system, and of your private options (including out-of-pocket care) for your “urgent” needs. Once private insurance has been bankrupted, by definition, all health care remaining will be “non-urgent” — just like the National Health Service in Great Britain. Don’t you feel better now? Of course, they could outlaw or penalize out-of-pocket care (again, as they do in Great Britain). Britons who need urgent care or unavailable medicines usually solve the issue by going to the Continent and getting what they need. Of course, they keep quiet about because there are penalties for that sort of thing under the NHS.
To paraphrase another Freeper: politics is not a spectator sport, but it should be.