Good Times When Obama Improvises

Once again the president demonstrates a complete lack of awareness of the very issues he pushes. The following came from a recent appearance by The Won.

A student raised a question about the government's provision of health services and its impact on private services. Obama answered:

"How can a private company compete against the government? My answer is that if the private insurance companies are providing a good bargain, and if the public option has to be self-sustaining, meaning that taxpayers aren't subsidizing it, but it has to run on charging premiums and providing good services, and a good network of doctors, just like private insurers do, then I think private insurers should be able to compete.

"They do it all the time. If you think about it, UPS and Fed-Ex are doing just fine. It's the Post Office that's always having problems.... there is nothing inevitable about this somehow destroying the private marketplace. As long as it is not set up where the government is being subsidized by the taxpayers so that even if they are providing a good deal, we keep having to pony up more and more money."

You know, that sounds like a great argument AGAINST government intervention in health care. Gee America, your health care can be run just with as much cost efficiency as the Postal Service.

Of course Fed Ex is not exactly running in a purely capitalist mode either, having somehow gotten John Kerry to successfully introduce legislation many years ago to tweak the law and give them an advantage over UPS. Meanwhile the Postal Service, unable to handle its own task efficiently, repeatedly contracts out a lot of work to UPS.

Obama really needs to stick to his script. When he gets too far away from it, too much truth comes out. Then he just sounds like Joe Biden.