The U.S. Postal Service is facing some tough choices. Tasked with finding ways to cover huge losses, the Postal Service can continue to raise prices or figure out how to get people to mail more cards and letters.

It also can cut costs. Earlier this year, the service planned to drop Saturday delivery, then abandoned that idea. Now, a House panel is considering a proposal (that) by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which includes phasing out door-to-door delivery by 2022.

Instead of having letter carriers pick up and deliver mail to doorsteps, route drivers would deliver to mailboxes at the end of driveways and cluster boxes such as those used at apartments and malls.

Financially, that move might make sense, although logistics could keep it from becoming universal….

Critics worry people who are homebound will not be able to walk to the curb to get their mail. But the 94 million who now have mailboxes must include shut-ins who somehow manage to get their mail….

If there were easy, painless solutions to operating in the black, the Postal Service would have done them by now. Aside from enticing people to increase their use of the U.S. mail, changes will have to be made in the postal system. Elimination of door-to-door service may be one of them.

The (Tiffin) Advertiser-Tribune