Cleveland Plain Dealer...
Americans mustn’t let medicine go postal
By Kevin O’Brien  
September  17, 2011 

With the effects of a badly ailing economy and a clueless national leadership all around us, Americans could use some cheering up. 

If you’re depressed, either because President Barack Obama hasn’t worked out the way you hoped or because he has done precisely as you feared, here’s a word of advice to help you keep up whatever spirits you’ve got left: 

For God’s sake, don’t take a look at the U.S. Postal Service. 

As for those of you who still have the courage and the will to face reality and the hope to salvage America’s future, read on. What follows won’t cheer you up, but it might help you marshal some arguments heading toward Election Day. 

A just-released Bloomberg National Poll shows Obama’s approval numbers worsening since the slow-motion unveiling of his latest “jobs plan.” 

Of those polled Sept. 9-12, 57 percent think he’s wrong in the way he’s going about “creating jobs,” and 62 percent said he was not only mishandling the budget deficit but also worsening the economy in general. 

There was a bright spot for the president in the polling, though: A mere 53 percent of Americans have figured out that he’s messing up health care. 

But the 39 percent of incurable Obamacare optimists should consider this: The future is in the mail. Where Obamacare is going, the U.S. Postal Service has already been. 

In 1971, the Post Office Department became the Postal Service -- cut loose, financially, by Congress but, from the point of view of policies and operations, still under Congress’ thumb. The result is a quasi-private “business” forced by Congress to operate within rules that guarantee financial losses. 

Even closing a post office -- something the Postal Service supposedly has the power to do -- risks a confrontation with a congressman who doesn’t want to see any constituent deprived of anything (that the congressman doesn’t have to figure out how to pay for). 

The Postal Service has lost $20 billion over the last decade, expects to lose $9 billion just this year and is on track to lose another $200 billion plus over the next decade if Congress doesn’t allow big changes. 

Congress’ choices are narrowing to two: propping the Postal Service up indefinitely with money Congress doesn’t have, or turning it loose so it can compete in today’s world of UPS, Federal Express and email. 

That same destitute Congress made a decision not long ago to begin the federalization of health care. 

Federal regulators have been madly scribbling rules to implement the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act since the day congressional Democrats passed it. The statute includes more than 700 directives to federal agencies to interpret, amplify, implement and enforce a law that governs how health care providers and health insurers do their work. 

During Congress’ long wrangle over Obamacare, a popular argument from opponents was that a visit to the doctor was about to become like a visit to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. That would be bad enough, but now imagine a visit to a Bureau of Motor Vehicles that’s out of money. 

Congress is not going to want to pay what it takes to run the best health care system in the world any more than it has cared to support modern, flexible, competitive, efficient mail delivery. 

When it tired of funding the Post Office Department, it privatized the financial side but kept control of the operational side. The result has been growth in costs in an agency that is locked in obsolescence, is forbidden to innovate and so does less and less. 

The answer is going to be, as Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe recommends, cutting services. 

How anyone could think the same thing will not happen under federalized health care is a mystery. Of course it will. 

And here’s another postal parallel, especially for Ohio’s public employees: Why are the Postal Service’s expenses going through the roof at just this inopportune time? Labor and legacy costs. 

The Government Accounting Office says pension benefits, health coverage and workers’ compensation account for 30 percent of Postal Service expenses. 

Donahoe’s proposed response is to end Saturday mail delivery, close thousands of post offices, dump 120,000 workers and bail out of the federal retirement and health care plans. 

Service cuts and job cuts are what happen when government -- or even quasi-government -- runs out of other people’s money. 

Ohio’s public employees think their fight is with Republicans, but it’s not. Their opponent is the economy, and no matter what happens to Issue 2 this November, they can’t win. 

Read it at the Cleveland Plain Dealer