The best way to 'rescue' General Motors is single payer health care
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson that the administration should consider expanding the $700 billion bailout to include car companies.
Generally speaking, the right-wing corporate media blames the trouble at GM and Ford on labor unions. I would probably place some of the blame on the fact that GM doesn't build small hybrid gasoline-electric cars, but instead seems to make all of its money off gas-guzzling pollute-mobiles the size of the USS Nimitz.
However, a good case can be made that General Motors and Ford don't make money because the United States is plagued by the greatest bureaucratic waste of money in the history of the world: our for-profit health insurance industry.
A recent estimate by Price Waterhouse Coopers put the total amount wasted by our healthcare system at $1.2 trillion per year. A study from 2005 by Boston University put the figure at $950 billion.
Major sources of unnecessary spending include administrative costs and profit in the insurance industry, high prices of prescription drugs and health services and, to a smaller extent, theft and fraud, according to the study.
We spend far more than any other country on healthcare, but get far less for it. US auto companies claim to be burdened by the high cost of healthcare coverage for their workers. That should not be surprising, given the amount of waste in the system. What might be surprising is the Big Three did come out in favor of Universal Health Insurance -- in Canada! Their executives wrote:
The public health care system significantly reduces total labour costs for automobile manufacturing firms, compared to the cost of equivalent private insurance services purchased by U.S.-based automakers; these health insurance savings can amount to several dollars per hour of labour worked. Publicly funded health care thus accounts for a significant portion of Canada's overall labour cost advantage in auto assembly, versus the U.S., which in turn has been a significant factor in maintaining and attracting new auto investment to Canada...
For both employers and workers in the auto industry, it is vitally important that the publicly funded health care system be preserved and renewed, on the existing principles of universality, accessibility, portability, comprehensiveness, and public administration...
So if you want to 'rescue' General Motors and Ford, it seems to me the obvious way to do that and benefit 'main street' at the same time is to pass HR-676, the single payer healthcare bill authored by John Conyers.
Barack Obama at one point acknowledged the need for single payer. Can we hold his feet to the fire? Will executives at General Motors, Ford, and Daimler-Chrysler testify on behalf of a public insurance system for the United States?
I'm generally a moderate on most issues. If there is ONE area where I lean 'left', it is probably on Health Care: I support single-payer as a moral goal, on the simple principle that if it isn't mentioned in the Constitution, it SHOULD have been - EVERY citizen has a right (yes, a RIGHT)to reasonable health care, cradle to grave.
When one is lucky enough that the right thing to do is also the SMART thing to do, it doesn't get any better than that. Employers should get out of the Health Care business, and focus 100% of their attention on the nuts and bolts of their respective specialties - especially for troubled companies like the Big-Three auto people, that would seem to be the area most requiring their full attention.
How do we PAY for it? First, we're ALREADY 'paying' for it, without the benefit of even getting it. Second, how do we 'pay' for police? How do we 'pay' for water? How do we 'pay' for fire protection? When something is essential enough, you find a way.
We need ASAP to get on a sustainable PATH to single-payer universal health care, and we need eventually to actually GET there.
November 9, 2008 8:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
Just as an aside on "it isn't mentioned in the US Constitution." On December 10, we will be "celebrating" the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
It says:
I often wonder why it is when politicians like McCain deny the right to medical care, reporters don't immediately ask them which other parts of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights would they like to strike out? But of course the answer is the reporters probably don't know the Universal Declaration exists.
Which brings me to my second point, which is that the preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says this:
So after sixty years, does any organ of American society (let alone every organ) "strive by teaching and education" to "promote respect for these rights and freedoms"?
No. On this we get the great of EPIC FAIL.
November 9, 2008 3:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Absolutely! It is one of the main reasons we can't compete with other countries. Take away the burden of the high health insurance premiums and all companies will be better off. Also, premiums will be cheaper across the board because the risk will be shared.
Single Payer -- The way to go. It will be very hard to get Congress to agree to this because as it is they have an absolutely golden policy (as do all federal employees) -- they will not give that up without a fight.
November 9, 2008 2:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rec'd. Health care reform should be the number one priority. It affects everything else.
November 10, 2008 1:32 AM | Reply | Permalink