YOUR COMMENTS

It turns out that the very Republicanic senators who are leading the charge against the horrors of government run health care have rushed to government run hospitals to have their medical care dispensed.

Senator George Voinovich, (R-Ohio), pacemaker installed, Senator Kit Bond (R-Mo.), hip replacement surgery, Senator John McCain, (R-Ariz.), remove a potentially lethal melanoma, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), elective coronary artery bypass surgery, Rep. Roy Blunt, (R-Mo.) remove his left kidney and prostate surgery.

Doesn't it seem odd that those that want to protect you from government run health care and hospitals seem to want to go there themselves?

The Bethesda Naval Hospital is the premier branch of the Navy's system of medical centers. And yet they want to prevent the intrusiveness and inefficiencies of government run health care for you. Maybe they just want to keep you from interfering with their access. Go figure.
- William, Deerfield

Actually, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006, was enacted on the reccomendation of President Bush's Commission on the U.S. Postal Service released in the summer of 2003.

So the Postal Service employee who blamed the problem on Bush was on point.
- JC, Washington DC

Excellent article Mr. Adams.

Name one thing the Government can't get wrong.

While the USPS is circling the drain they have to wait for the Congress to okay eliminating Saturday delivery which they are reluctant to do because it is going to cause job loses in their districts.

The USPS doesn't receive any funds from the Federal Government and is supposed to function like any other business but with Congress involved that is like trying to swim with your arms tied behind your back.
- Richard A. Yaw, Truro, Iowa

As usual, Spike(Chris) is behind the times. Americans do fly to Bombay and Taiwan for cardiac surgery and hip replacement and I just heard of a woman who went overseas for bariatric surgery. It cost her $10,000 over there, including air fare, and was estimated at $90,000 here. That is the nature of the nanny state that Republicanics have created. Your job is shipped over seas, but the prices of locally expensive things, doctors, lawyers, financial services, bankers, are subject to the protectionism you (an actual worker) can't hope to get. Who got that TARP money? Rich people like Spike and their stock broker, banker friends. Over 70% of the stimulus money is slated to go to bribe those same people to be nice to our country's financial system. The fix is in, you are out.
- Robert, Deerfield

Actually Brian, you ought to get some facts as well, lest you embarrass yourself further.
As is the case in any debate, anecdotal evidence means absolutely nothing. The fact is that you can easily provide evidence to support either side of this argument. I personally know several people who have traveled to Canada as well as England to receive their procedures.

What does this prove? Absolutely nothing, just as individuals traveling here for health care proves nothing.
- Herb C., Concord

Let's face it. Unios have ruined many companies and continue to do so with inflated wages, pensions, medical benefits etc. that companies cannot afford over time. Get rid of the unions and you will see more corporations flourish.
- Rob, Manchester, CT.

Tom L in Rochester - The health care systems in Canada, France, Britain and Switzerland work better than what we have in this country? Tell me, why don't people head to those countries when they need specialized care? Why do they come here? Sounds to me like you've been hoodwinked by the smoke & mirrors show put on by the village idiot from Kenya and his entourage. Get the facts before you embarrass yourself further.
- Brian, Farmington

Whether it's the Post Office or Medicare or Social Security or whatever, the U.S. government has proven over time that they cannot run an enterprise effectively... However, our representatives in Washington have a fantastic record of incompetence and bankrupting our nation... So let's realize that we do not have the "best and brightest" working for us in D.C., so why give them more control over our lives... We really need to start taking control of our own lives and making our own healthcare decisions...
- Hedge, Newton

UPS,FEDEX, and others, have been eating the post offices' lunch for years.
In fact, if they were allowed to be letter carriers, the competition would devour that post office lunch too.

Why has this happened? The competitors are lower cost operators by not offering guranteed pensions, colas, and a low cost federal benefit medical insurance that is not availible to non government employees. This is true of most government run infrastructures. Given competition, a competitor will always try to perform the task cheaper,better, or uniquely.
- Paul, Bedford

This is a common geovernment phenomenon. Please government help me comes a special interest plea.

Insurance is a perfect example where the restrictions are on the people and the money in the pockets of our elected leaders.

Then the cry to help make frivolous lawsuits easy and again money flowed tinto the pockets of our elected officials.

Both of those special interests have helped to drive up the cost of health care. Now that government is being summoned to healthcare they want to pass new legislation to fix the very problem created by past legislation.

maybe it is a new era where we need to consider removing or modifying previous legislation rather than rewriting it.

We as citizen voters allowed the government to lead us into this mess. Along the way, corruption increased so much that our current elected officials have no way to help us out lest they lose their campiagn contributors.
- Michael Layon, Derry

"The conservative nanny state", Robert?

Don't you mean "the government nanny state"?
- Guy Plante, Manchester

What really important is that we leave the rich to live their lives in peace. They run the country, they decide what's on the news, they make policy for all of us ignorant little people, they are our heroes, thank heavens!

At the DaVinci Code author's new house in Rye, (said to cost over thirty million dollars,) they just delivered some trees - ninety tractor trailer trucks, forty of which had one tree each. Every man needs privacy.

The top 1% of the wealthy have 40% of all the money in the country this is good because we'd just waste it a dentist or eye doctor. Better that they have gold faucets and 10,000 bottle wine cellars than working folks have insurance that actually covers them at a price that is fair. You let your wine cellar get down to 9000 bottles and I could not imagine how you would sleep at night for fear of having to drink a beer.
- Roger, Rochester

How ironic, just yesterday I was talking to a frioend who works for the post office. He claimed that it was George Bush who ruined the post office. I asked him how and he did not know but he knew GB ruined the p[ost office by enancting some law. Now I see it wass Cong Waxman who ruined the PO not GB. Well quite honestly even if I showed this article to the man, he would be convinced it was GB's fault. Oh well you can't argue w/the facts, unless you choose to ignore them.
- Michael King, Epping

For once I suggest that people read the post of Robert of Deerfield, that the problem is not mismanagement at the Postal Service but allowing UPS and FedEx to compete for package delivery. Robert is a moonbat and this is how moonbats think. The problem is not high taxes but individuals opting for Swiss bank accounts; not high minimum wages and plant-closing laws but the fact that employers are sending jobs offshore. Restrictions on liberty are never the problem; your desire to live your own life despite them, is. So when Soviet-care fails here, as everywhere else, and when you fly with your mother to Bombay to get her a hip replacement, health-care by gunpoint will still not be the problem, in the minds of moonbats. The problem will still be that the dictatorship was not total.
- Spike, Brentwood NH

Note to Tom L.: Six years ago, 15,000 people died during an August heat wave in France. Why? Because hospitals and healthcare oversight functions – all under government stewardship – were left understaffed during the summer holiday. British hospitals are infamous for their high levels of hospital-borne infections. They run out of maternity beds, leaving mothers to give birth in hallways. Canada runs out of surgery capacity and sends patients to U.S. surgeons -- good for Canadians, but where will sick Americans go if our own capacity tightens? The list goes on and on -- the more government gets involved with healthcare, the more it is rationed and mismanaged. Healthcare is complex and challenging to deliver in any country. None do it better than the U.S.
- Rick, Portsmouth

One of the GOP's favorite themes is that the government can't run anything efficiently, and so should not be entrusted with a greater role in the health care system. The Republican dogma is that in a free market, efficiencies abound, and companies never have the same kinds of problems.

Unfortunately for the GOP, that's a lie; and recent history has put that lie into specific relief. One need look no further than AIG, the insurance giant. Here's a company whose sole business - their very raison d'etre - is to manage risk. Their executives are paid MILLIONS of dollars a year to make the big decisions because they know so much about managing risk. Yet they so poorly calculated the risks of their investments that they nearly went bankrupt, taking a substantial proportion of the US economy with them. In the end, they had to be bailed out by you and me, the taxpayer. (Of course, they kept their millions - accountability is not the strong suit of either governments or corporations)

All systems fail - sometimes epically - when people make mistakes. It does not follow that systems - be they businesses or governments - can never do anything right. It's up to us to hold their feet to the fire, and demand excellence. In the end, they all work for us.
- Dave, Sandwich

"And now Congress has the audacity to say the Postal Service has a broken business model."

More accurately, Congress has a broken business model, not that it should be in the business of business in the first place. How much more evidence of the utter ineptitude of this administration and Congress do Obama apologists need to see before they realize these people cannot run health care?
- Tom, Campton

Tom correctly points out that government is involved in healthcare via Medicare/Medicaid, VA, etc. However, Tom believes that it's only governments involvement in healthcare that makes it work. This is laughable.

Regulations, made by good ole Uncle Sam, prevent insurers from selling across state lines. Hence, no free market. Regulations also tell insurers what they need to cover. So your insurance is no longer insurance at all, it's a plan to pay for your healthcare. If you break a pane of glass in your house, do you call your insurance company? No. But if a tree falls on your house causing significant damage, well, that's what insurance is for. Now our "insurance" is covering such things as Viagra. Swell.

The current plans being kicked around want to use MA as a model. When the system was put into place, it was said that if everyone has insurance, premiums would go down! Well, I work in MA and I can tell you that is not the case. In fact, premiums have gone up faster than in other areas of the country. The MA Commonwealth Connector has actually added an additional 4% in administrative costs! Yes, that really addressed the cost issue didn't it.

Furthermore, the theory is that by having people have healthcare coverage, ER use would go down thereby driving costs down. However, what they fail to see was that an increase in the demand for services would drive prices up and in the process create rationing. Try getting an appointment for a physical and you'll see it's a 4 to 6 month wait.

Also, this plan did not help the poor. To the contrary, it put up barriers. Hey, here's your new healthcare plan! Isn't it great! And oh, by the way, you have to pay a co-pay when you go to the doctor. Well, a co-pay for you and I might not be a big deal, but to a poor person it is. So instead of going to the doctor, they put it off. Where do they end up? The ER, just where the government didn't want them to be in the first place. Brilliant.

Then there is the costs. We are already in a deep financial hole with the trillions of dollars of debt. We spend and borrow recklessly, and now were about to spend some more. That bill is coming due soon, and we're all going to feel it. Can you say VAT? Don't be surprised when it happens. Obama's pledge to not increase taxes on those under 250K is a joke. There are not enough rich people to pay for the debt our government has recklessly run up.

There are ways to make the system work better. I'm very dubious that government run healthcare will be the answer. Too many of our representatives are in the back pockets of the major players.
- Todd, Atkinson

I don't mind the USPS being a monopoly because its charter requires that it be self-funding. I have a big problem with Congress imposing unreasonable demands upon the USPS and then blaming the USPS for it. Even though Congress has oversight over the USPS, it should maintain a hands-off policy and not mess with it.
- David R, Manchester

The postal service is failing because of the rise of the internet and express messenger services. New technology has made it less relevant. The monopoly that was once the telephone company..privately run, rate and cost regulated, is a good model for the insurance industry which has been in need of reform for decades. We do not need to significantly alter medicine nor its delivery system. We need to enahance a focus on wellness and preventative care with less focus on end of life issues.

The insurance industry is by far the most inefficient and corrupt from underwrting through brokers through claims. Many of us who have worked in it for more than two decades long ago drew that conclusion. However, we have such a grip on Congress and the state regulators that real reform will never come. Look at AIG.
- paul needham, derry nh 03038

Tom Labrie of Rochester, are you really so narrow-minded as to call any argument with which you disagree "koolaid and baloney"? Your spiteful rhetoric is turning more people off from your point of view and more towards the Republicans than you realize.
- Nick, Manchester

The exact same thing has happened to Medicare. For decades, Congress couldn't keep its hands off the Medicare trust fund, "stealing" funds for purposes completely unrelated to Medicare. As Obama has pointed out, Medicare is now only a 4 to 10 years from bankruptcy. Great job, Congress.

Now it wants a public option against which private insurance will never be able to complete and we will end up with a single-payer system rationing health care.

I believe in the end that rational Democrats will "cross the aisle" to join the GOP in ending this public option lunacy and enact real health care reform without destroying it.
- Patriot Paul, Hampton

What a wonderful business model. You might think that the Republicanics thought of it. The Post Office has not been a governmental agency for many years just as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not governmental agencies. Now they are some sort of highbrid where just like with banks, the profits are private and the losses are public. Instead of raising the cost of mailing something, as any business person with a brain might do, they allowed FedEx and UPS to steal off all the juicy package jobs where they charge about three times as much. You don't notice UPS or FedEx going to each house every day do you? Think that might influence their profits? This is the conservative nanny state in full fettle.
- Robert, Deerfield

Its quite simple with revenue losses in US Postal Service. World Wide Web, email, texting, cell phones, better telecommuncations infrastructure. No one writes anymore using the letter format. Snail mail is only good for some bills and packages. The other two companies: UPS and FEDEX deliver packages very well.
- Jack Truman, Middleton, NH

There is no doubt that Congress would mismanage any National Health Service. It caused the current collapse by trying to use banks as charities; it responded by seeking new powers to address "systemic" risk, though centralizing decision-making with politicians makes every local risk systemic; and its biggest concern seems to be that good managers earn high salaries.

Even the Postal Service sells personal information to junk-mailers, putting the needs of special interests ahead of the preferences of the individual. That we would have to disclose to Washington everything we disclose to an insurer is an opening for a level of mismanagement and abuse we've never seen before--though done with the good intentions we're familiar with.
- Spike, Brentwood NH

One other problem with the post office, it is a monoploy. Law prevents any other service from delivering letters ( fed-ex, UPS, DHL are parcel delievery). Do we really want the likes of Waxman, Pelosi, even our own mis-guided Shea-Porter, political party before the voters people all, taking a medical care delivery system that works for most, but could use some major tweaks, and throw it down the drain?
- jeff, Goffstown

More koolaid and baloney for breakfast!

Keep the gov out of health care? You mean kick seniors to the curb by ending Medicare? You mean end the gov regulations that keep private insurers from kicking most people off the roles and raising rates out of sight?

The idea that gov may "get into healthcare" belies the fact that it is already deeply involved in health care, and in fact it is only that involvement that makes the system work. When an article's premise is a lie, the article is a lie.

In fact highly regulated systems of different types in Canada, France, Britain, and Switzerland all work better for their people at lower cost than our private system does for us.

The koolaid GOP, where facts don't matter and history never happened.
- Tom Labrie, Rochester