He also disputed the notion that adding a government-run insurance plan into a menu of options from which people could pick would drive private insurers out of business, in effect making the system single-payer by default.
As long as they have a good product and the government plan has to sustain itself through premiums and other non-tax revenue, private insurers should be able to compete with the government plan, Obama said.
"They do it all the time," he said. "UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. ... It's the Post Office that's always having problems."
Ace's reply addresses this stupidity in a way that I do not think I could improve upon.
They are specifically excluded from that market.
They are "doing fine" in the market segment they're permitted to compete in.
However, if the law were changed and they were permitted to compete for regular mail delivery, they might not be "doing fine" in that market if the government competed unfairly in that arena, such as imposing general taxes on everyone to reduce the cost of postage, etc.
The government, on the other hand, continues to exist in this business at all only because the government grants itself a monopoly in the delivery of regular mail.
That's the only reason we still have a Post Office. Government fiat.
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