Something else about U.S. health care:

You’ve heard the refrain: If the government ran healthcare, it would be just like the U.S. Postal Service. And nobody wants that.

Or do we? The USPS, an independent government agency, is the convenient butt of jokes regarding poor service, rude employees, and occasional government mangling of personal property. It routinely borrows from the government to cover operating losses and endures disruptive political meddling in basic management decisions.

Despite the disparaging clichés, however, the Postal Service has some attributes that might make it a strong model for healthcare. It provides a basic service that’s not available from the private sector. To people without health coverage, postal-style healthcare might be a lot better than none at all. If service in a government healthcare plan turned out to be surly, that might even be a good thing: It would ensure a healthy market for better-run private plans, reducing fears of a government takeover. Oh, yeah, there’s one other thing: In customer satisfaction surveys, the Postal Service already scores higher than health insurers.

That makes sense to me. I never have a problem with the Post Office. It’s not perfect. I know we’d all like to have our letters and packages instantaneously transported across the country for free but, realistically, the service we get from the Post Office is much better than some of the other organizations we have to deal with. In fact, if everything ran as smoothly as the post office it would be a wonderful world.