… by implementing universal, single-payer health care.
By recent estimates, health care benefits add about $1,500 to the cost of every U.S. built car, putting the auto and every other US industry at a competitive disadvantage in the global marketplace. So why not take advantage of this economic crisis to put all the moral, political and ideological arguments aside, and finally implement universal health care simply because the modern economy demands it?
Goldy ..
You might take a look at my detailed reply to Jon’s excellent post. While we are at this we also need t get the private sector out of other social programs including most retirement.
Private for-profit health insurance is an abysmal failure:
1. America, unique among First World counries, has tens of millions of uninsured citizens;
2. Even the insured can incur devastating medical expenses because of coverage gaps and limitations;
3. Buying health insurance may be no insurance at all because many insurers now fight claims instead of honoring the policies their customers paid premiums for.
This has created unacceptable risks and uncertainties for most Americans. It’s also an outrageously — and unnecessarily expensive — system that adds 33% to the cost of health care without adding any value. Private insurance’s A&O costs are 50 times Medicare’s — for less value.
It’s time to recognize that our experiment with private for-private health insurance is a failure and move to something else. We waste enough money on the counterproductive private health insurance industry to cover everyone and still have enough money left over to give everyone a large premium cut.
One possibility might be to keep private coverage for routine care and have government assume responsibility for catastrophic medical expenses. This would free our people from the constantly nagging fear that a serious illness will strip a family of its life savings and force them to live in poverty and debt. By being freed of paying huge medical bills, the private insurance industry could reduce premiums and wouldn’t have any reason or incentive to refuse to issue policies or play coverage games. Nationalization of major medical expenses should be accompanied by regulations requiring companies to provide routine coverage to anyone who applies at reasonable cost. There is no need or justification for insurance execs to make tens or hundreds of millions of dollars a year for running what essentially would be a nearly risk-free industry.
YAAAAYYYYY!!!!
Somebody agrees with me!!!!!
The current system of employer-linked health care is one of the primary problems in our society. It is one of the driving forces behind employers in retail offering only part-time jobs (to avoid paying for health-care benefits for workers), and outsourcing.
It adds to employers who DO provide health care an increasingly large burden of cost (compared with those that do not). It ties workers to jobs they should leave because they can’t afford to go without insurance, or to even have a gap in coverage while a “pre-existing condition” exclusion prevents coverage for several months under their new employer.
And insurers know that employees will, on average, either quit, get laid off, or their company will go out of business within three years. So they know it doesn’t pay for them to offer preventive care, or to pay for certain treatments if the employee will be either unemployed or insured by someone else when their condition gets really serious.
And most importantly, most of the of the competitors to U.S. manufacturers DON’T have to pay for medical care of their employees or their families. Germany, Japan, and Korea all have a national health-care system. I can’t speak to Germany’s, but my co-workers from Japan and Korea say those countries actually offer better care, on average, than in the U.S. Of course, China (which is becoming the manufacturing behomith in the world) has had free health care as a by-product of it’s communist days.
RR @ 4: Or, you could do it the other way around.
Insurance policies with very high deductables (“umbrella policies) are relatively cheap, because the administrative burden of processing lots of small claims is gone. So if you could have a national health-care system which makes sure everybody can go to a doctor for the regular stuff, the expensive stuff can be taken care of with private insurance (with careful regulation to make sure they actually pay claims).
That would take the heat off the emergency rooms, which have more than their fair share of patients without insurance (no doctor will see them without an insurance card), or the “weekend sports heroes” who twist an ankle playing soccer on Saturday, but few regular doctor’s offices are open on weekends to tend to such minor problems.
Anyone notice a huge dropoff in troll traffic?
Cynical’s contract with BIAW must have ended.
Whatever deal Stamn had going must have gone bust as well.
Troll is hanging in there but we all know he’s just plain crazy.
The true believers who worked for nothing are re-fortifying themselves with 24/7 infusions of wingnut hate talk radio, Fixed News Channel and the countless inter-tubes destinations of the mass right-wing delusion echo chamber.
Have you noticed yelling loser boy is still an idiot?
We “trolls” have!
Ha! Stupes, I’d be careful about that “loser” appellation.
The right wing bullshit you dragged in here for years has failed.
It had no chance from the start. You can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
In my macroeconomics study group we’ve been discussing this as part of the mix for revitalizing the auto industry. Other factors: remove the tax incentive cap on high-mileage, low emission vehicles (currently up to 60,000 cars per make), tie any loan guarantees or development funds to research and production of next generation renewable fuels and fuel infrastructure, incent innovation and domestic expansion while discouraging overseas investment and exporting profits, reset compensation agreements on both executives and labor, discontinue executive compensation packages that reward failure. Lastly, the idea of a single-payer system might be improved by observing the Norwegian model for nationalized oil: two enterprises competing against each other. This dynamic will drive out waste and encourage healthy competitive practices while serving the common goal of providing the best health care in the world at the best prices.
So you leftist morons are admitting much the labor cost differential of $48 for Toyota/Nissan plants and the almost $74 for a UAW plant is health care?
Or will you morons admit the UAW forces the car companies into contracts where the employees pay very little for their health contracts?
Industry analysis says the average worker only pays 7% of his burden. The average U.S. corporate employee pays 32 percent of the cost of his or her health care. Hence approximately $1.6 – $2 MMM per year is spent just by GM on it’s employees.
Y – yelling because you have no argumentative facts except for ACVR
L – loser because that’s what you are
B – boy because you are a boy among men with your “debate” skillz”
Nuff SAID sucka!
Hay Puddy
Howsabout them ex commies challeging the Monroe Doctrine?
Itseems to me that Obama should move to declare the Carribean a foreigner free zone.
So why not take advantage of this economic crisis…
Because the Management can line their pockets with cash if we give them a Bush Bailout?
@11 “sucka”
Good grief, Pudz. I’ve long suspected that your soulbrotherly self is merely a surface personality – a simple persona gleaned from watching old Fred Williamson and Jim Brown flicks.
SeattleJew – Now that’s an interesting concept. Looks like some of y’all won’t be visiting if that occurs. Only us “darkies” can travel there. I’ll work on my tan…
Ahhh Steve of Steve’s Stupid Solution. You should talk to Goldy or Lee to understand the Philly use of the term – sucka.
See ya sucka!
@10: yup blame the unions for the years of lousy cars with high gas mileage and the emphasis on trucks and vans.
I say let them sink – the management was pathetically inept. Oh, and the opposition to CAFE standards would have cut their immediate profit but let them be competitive now instead of ceding the small car market to Honda.
I agree totally. Universal Healthcare is a much better way of relieving company costs then bailing them out with huge chunks of cash at one time. It’s especially bad now since the Nationa Debt is at $1 trillion. No Bailout! Universal Healthcare instead.
Great. Let’s bail out the auto industry and bankrupt the whole country. I don’t disagree that something needs to be done about rising healthcare costs but the solution needs to be financially realistic and responsible.
The healthcare line items in the federal budget, specifically Medicare and Medicaid, are driving the US government to insolvency. Don’t take my word for it, though. David Walker, the former comptroller general of the US has quite a lot to say on the matter.
http://www.pgpf.org/resources/.....sGuide.pdf
11 – Argumentative facts?
How about last Nov 4.
You’re done. Sucka!
Pudz, I come from the housing projects of Seattle’s Rainier Valley. No offence to you foreigners from Philly (Hmm, you likely never heard of Lesser Seattle), but I could give a flying fuck what “sucka” means to you East Coast interlopers with your high-falutin’ ways. To me it means you’ve likely watched too many 70’s blaxploitation flicks.
Wow Stupes I’m so surprised you consider ACVR an “argumentative fact”.
It was the fantasy of many on the right wing including that now scarce cur DOOFUS.
It evaporated into thin air along with the rest of the right wing bullshit.
While in general I think that companies who cannot compete should be allowed to fail, I don’t think this is a good time to allow or cause large industrial failures. We DO need to get out of the business of crafting federal budgets around industrial subsidies (or agricultural ones for that matter). The smart way to do something about it quickly is probably to keep subsidies (to retain the support of those who benefit, which is why they remain in place anyway) but restructure them so that the incentives they create are entirely different. For example, if autmobile industry subsidies and regulations were aimed at encouraging low-carbon solutions, it would make subsidizing them much more worthwhile.
The US auto industry is just fine with non union manufactures….
Q, Why was the UAW at the meeting with regards to the bailout?
Let them go bankrupt…It is the only way to force them to change their ways…
While I have no problem with expanding health care in this country, I say let the Big Three die. They actually won’t though, because they’re so much larger than most of you know. Ford and GM could suspend all North American manufacturing operations tomorrow, take a few months off, and come back in time for the next model year with a full lineup of new vehicles….without a single American-made car!
Remember, Ford and GM are global corporations, albeit in different guises. A Ford is a Ford is a Ford the world over, while GM owns marques like Opel, Vauxhall, Saab, and Holden, and holds an interest in Subaru as well. This is what gives the American car buyer a Holden Monaro rebadged as the new Pontiac GTO (and the Holden Commodore pickup as the new Chevy El Camino) and a remodeled Subuaru WRX as the Sabb 9-2X and a remodeled Chevy TrailBlazer as the Saab 9-7.
And Chrysler won’t be dead for long either, because while Daimler-Benz broke up their merger with Chrysler, who wants to bet that ol’ Dr. Z will be first in line to buy up the corpse of Chrysler’s manufacturing base to become a new manufacturing base for Mercedes Benz? Though it would be odd to see the three-ponted star over Detroit…..
The most fiscally prudent policy I have read from you, Goldy.
This is just one of the policies President-elect Obama should stand for.
Has anyone thought to ask why Japan can build a care cheaper? You know…that country full of foreigners with a higher living standard than…wait for it…the god ol’ USA!
Perhaps it’s because they have health care for everyone??
In post # 27 that would be “car” not “care”…
27 I would imagine because most of their
people aren’t on the dole like here. They
have personal pride. I wonder how long Oblamas
supporters are going to sit by the mailbox until they realize they have been DUPED. This
is so fucking entertaining. The best part is
you have NO idea.
#30
Actually, the funny part is that you have no idea that Japan is socialist as much as, if not more than, the USA.