Pres. Obama’s statement about FedEx, UPS, and the post office has been called out as bad economics and as bad rhetoric. If the public option is always in trouble, like the post office, how is it “supposed to keep insurance companies honest” and force them to compete unless it is set up so that “we keep on having to pony up more and more money?”

Let’s make it easier for the FedExes and UPSes of the heath insurance industry to compete against each other by ending the tax bias against individual purchases of insurance, making consumer-driven health plans and health savings accounts less cumbersome, allowing purchases across state lines, and reducing the number of benefits insurers are required to include in policies to people who don’t want them.