If HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES RAN THE MAIL. In spite of the right-wing
ideology that private enterprise is more efficient than the government,
critics of a national health insurance program have complained that a
public insurance option would drive private insurance companies out of
business. That got Hunter at DailyKos.com thinking (9/22) about how
private companies like UPS and FedEx — which already “compete perfectly
well with the socialist front that is the United States Post Office,”
would do if they acted a little more like health insurance companies.

“First off, if health insurance companies ran the mail service you
couldn’t actually expect to send mail anywhere. You would have a list of
addresses it was OK to send mail to, and if you wanted to send your
packages anywhere else you’d have to deliver it your own damn self.

“If health insurance companies ran the mail service, you wouldn’t know
what it would cost to mail a package, because nobody involved would be
able to tell you, even if you spent the better part of a week on the
phone with them. You would know what it cost you one only after you
received the bill for mailing it....

“If health insurance companies ran the mail service, it would cost you
money to mail a package, but it would also cost you money to not mail a
package. ... and it would go up by 20% every year under the ‘just
because’ clause of your contract.

“If health insurance companies ran the mail service, your contract to
have packages delivered would stand a chance of being revoked if you
actually mailed one.

“If health insurance companies ran the mail service, between 20% and 40%
of packages simply wouldn’t arrive at their destination because
delivering them wouldn’t be cost effective, so bite us.

“And your package delivery service wouldn’t just idly sit by and send
what you wanted them to send. They’d *tell* you want you wanted to send.
Flowers are nice, but couldn’t you just send a card? Cookies are a bit
much, don’t you think?

“If health insurance companies ran the mail service, sometimes you’d ask
to mail a package to your aunt in Philadelphia but instead you’d be told
you had to mail it to her in Chicago, because Philadelphia would cost
more. On the bright side, it’d be good for her to get out of the house
more often.

“Your aunt couldn’t just get the package, in any case. That requires a
separate form. No — I mean this other form. And you need to fill it out
this way, not this other way. And now it’s two days late, so everything
is canceled and we’re taking your package, the one that we waited six
months to deliver anyway. The cookies were stale, by the way, so try
harder next time.

“Of course, all this is nonsense, because you can’t really make credible
comparisons between delivering a package and providing a service that
has responsibility for the health and welfare of every person in the
country. Delivering packages is important.”




--
Birther-Deather-Tenther-Teabagger:
Idiots All