To the editor:

I have grown thoroughly sick of the many letters in which the uninformed and ignorant continuously lambaste the U.S. Postal Service, Social Security and Medicare programs as total disasters. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The USPS delivers more mail to more addresses in a larger geographic area than any other postal system in the world. Last year, they processed 203 billion pieces of mail. This figures out to be 463,000 pieces each minute and 28 million pieces of mail per hour. I’d surely like to see FedEx try that. The recent financial problems they have encountered have been because the idiots in Congress moved to privatize the postal system to obtain alleged “market efficiencies.” This of course required USPS to immediately self-fund about $7 billion in retirement benefits.

Social Security handled claims and benefit payments on behalf of about 52,000,000 Americans in 2008. Similarly, Medicare provided benefits and claims to about 45,000,000 people in 2008. Speaking as someone who is a recipient of benefits under both these programs, they have been godsends to me. I have found them to be astonishingly quick, efficient and accurate to deal with. Perhaps Mr. Mach and some other writers would like to create their own competing systems. Good luck with that.