Posted on 04/20/2010 4:24:36 AM PDT by Kaslin
Back when Barack Obama was pushing for a public option in the new national healthcare system, he raised eyebrows with an out-of-nowhere remark about the U.S. Postal Service.
It happened last August at a town hall in Colorado. Obama claimed Americans shouldn't be afraid of a government insurance company -- the public option -- competing against private insurers, because even though the government has vastly more resources than any individual company, "You've got a lot of private companies who do very well competing against the government -- UPS and FedEx are doing a lot better than the post office."
Obama apparently liked the point, because he made it again at another town hall around the same time. "Private insurers should be able to compete," he said Aug. 11 in New Hampshire. "They do it all the time. I mean, if you think about it, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right? It's the post office that's always having problems."
It was a jarring moment. Here, Obama was trying to promote a huge expansion of government involvement in the health system, and he pointed to a sprawling, unresponsive and insanely expensive government bureaucracy. (It's also one that nearly every American knows from firsthand experience.) Not exactly the best case for government effectiveness.
Obama's words are coming back now, with news that the U.S. Postal Service is in even more of a mess than we thought. Without serious reform, it's set to lose $7 billion this year and $238 billion over the next 10 years, and a new report from the Government Accountability Office says the post office's business model is "not viable" given current business conditions. The report makes the post office sound like a government version of General Motors, if General Motors itself weren't already a government version of General Motors.
Demand for snail mail has been falling in recent years -- the GAO notes that first-class mail volume has declined 19 percent since its peak in 2001 -- and though the post office has cut some staff, it hasn't done nearly enough to keep up. The post office is supposed to pay for itself, but in recent years has been covering its losses by borrowing from the Treasury. But now, GAO notes, the post office "is nearing its $15 billion borrowing limit with the U.S. Treasury and has unfunded pension and retiree health obligations and other liabilities of about $90 billion."
Labor costs are killing the post office. Wages and benefits make up 80 percent of its expenses. About 85 percent of its employees are covered by union contracts, and many receive benefits beyond those of other federal workers. Union agreements force the post office to maintain more full-time employees than it needs; deny managers flexibility in assigning tasks, like having a retail clerk deliver mail; forbid the post office from outsourcing any city delivery routes; give about 500,000 employees total protection from layoffs; and "require (the post office) to pay a more generous share of employees' health and life-insurance premiums than most other agencies," according to GAO.
The post office operates under restrictions that do not burden private businesses. It has a legal monopoly on some types of letter mail, but it's also required by law to deliver mail to every address in the United States. Over the years, Congress has authorized the construction of too many post offices and the hiring of too many postal employees, and those are hard numbers to bring down. Altogether, it is a shining example of what happens when the government tries to operate like a business, only not really.
If it stands, the new healthcare law will establish government offices and agencies to create and run healthcare exchanges, to closely regulate insurance companies, to establish standards of care, to determine what are appropriate levels of coverage, to ensure compliance with the law -- it goes on and on. It is, well, a huge expansion of government involvement in the health system. And there is little doubt that many of its backers in Congress want to expand it further in the coming years. Some envision a day when the government, which already runs Medicare and Medicaid, runs health care entirely.
What could go wrong? It turns out Barack Obama has already told us: Just look at the post office.
Well if they charged more for rural delivery, the post office would make more money.
Postal article.
I heard the post office wants to close on Saturday to save money. What a joke....how much is a half a day off saving us? And while I’m on it...who picked Saturday? Most people work M-F and Saturday would be the only day they could get to the Post Office. The logical day would be Monday, it’s a full day.....oh, never mind, how dumb of me...the PO employees just want 3 days off with all those Monday holidays.
Every rate increase signals ‘feeding time!’ at the hog trough for the unions. Happens every time.
And if there is a worse, more adversarial, work environment on this planet, I don’t know where it is...It’s a wonder the mail shows up at all.
I think the post office should run their routes based on mail volume. Every address should get a minimum number of visits per week (one or two), but otherwise the mail volume for the route determines whether it gets service 1-6 visits per week.
You can’t be serious
Even with delivery eliminated on Saturdays, the stations could be open for retail counter business. And I’m not sure that postal employees get many more paid holidays than most people. While they do have some holidays that most people don’t get, they also work on days that many people have as holidays such as the day after Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. Every job has its pluses and minuses.
That idea has some merit.
A reason UPS & FEDex are successfull - they only go where they need to - i.e. when they have something to deliver.
With email and online bill paying- residential mail boxes are 90% junk mail flyers and catalogues.
Just increase schedules at Christmas, Valentines and EAster.
However, if the USPS decided to close this or any other small town post office, there would be howls of protest from the entire state congressional delegation, both Republican and Democrat.
“Labor costs are killing the post office. Wages and benefits make up 80 percent of its expenses.”
There you have it in a nutshell.
When I was a kid, the post office delivered to homes TWICE A DAY. That is correct, morning and afternoon delivery. And the post office made money in those days.
I double-checked...Apparently, I can.
Your comment in post# was ridiculous. Now if you are talking about junk mail, I agree with you completely, but what about when there is something very important the postal patron is waiting for. Besides why would you want to discriminate against those who live in the country. BTW I am not one of those who lives in the country
RFD carriers already deliver on a less than daily basis. Depending on the route, some people get mail three times a week.
I used to live on a rural route. I liked it. My mail carrier was friendly, and she could do everything the post office would do. I’d leave a piece of mail in the mailbox along with a dollar, and I’d get change when I came home. Very nice.
I don’t have detailed stats, but there are obviously many VERY remote routes where the letter carrier travels hundreds of miles every week for a few pieces of mail. If you adsolutely need a piece of mail on Monday instead of Thursday, you should not be using the USPS anyway. I could easily see 20 pct of routes with 6 days per week, 30 pct with 5 days, 20 pct with 3 days and 30 pct with 2 days. Each route would be determined purely by volume.
Obamacare the post office two coming to your town soon.
And some other examples of how the goverment “works”
We had to get duplicate title to my son’s car. Computers were down, so we had to wait HOURS. Obama Care will all be on computer
We have to have Texas Wind Storm Hail insurance besides our regular home insurance... because Katrina and Rita hit some place else, we have to get new $$$ insurance. It is VERY expensive coverage and pays tiny per cent of claim. our Claim $10K, our check was for $1500. They don’t pay this, they don’t pay that. And it is very expensive, and the deductable is HUGE. I think mine is $8K. When I added it to our regular insurance premium on our mortgage payment, it went from $1778 a month to $2400 a month payment.
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