| Topic: |
Science > Prophecies-Of-Nostradamus |
| User: |
"Foaming at the Mouth Psychotic" |
| Date: |
25 Nov 2005 09:14:31 AM |
| Object: |
GM's Healt-Care Shakedown Shows Systematic Flaws in Bush's America |
F*ck America. I hope there is a civil war and 100,000's die. When its
over, Gettyburg will be no more remembered than the Battle of Blair
Mountain.
GM's Healt-Care Shakedown Shows Systematic Flaws in Bush's America
by Bill Gallagher
General Motors and the United Autoworkers are on a collision course
over health-care costs and the issue underscores the refusal of George
W=2E Bush and the Republicans in Congress to do anything to fundamentally
change our failed system. It also shows how gutless GM executives and
the other suits in corporate America are in refusing even to discuss
the issue in real terms.
What's good for America is good for Wal-Mart is the essential Bush
policy on health care. The result is 45 million Americans with no
health insurance at all, skyrocketing costs for workers fortunate
enough to have insurance, large corporations and small businesses faced
with "unsustainable" burdens in providing coverage for their workers
and American enterprises severely weakened and stuck in a competitive
disadvantage in the world marketplace.
Our fractured health care system is the most costly, inefficient and
ineffective in the industrialized world. But Bush and the Republicans
like it that way because it pumps obscene profits into the coffers of
their core constituencies and campaign donors: drug companies,
insurance companies and corporate health care providers.
GM has issued an ultimatum to the UAW to deliver health-care
concessions by June 30 or else the automaker is threatening unilateral
action, which will violate workers=E2 contracts and is certain to
set-off labor strife.
GM is in big trouble and Standard & Poor's has downgraded America's
largest industrial corporation's debt to "junk bond" status. Ford also
has serious problems and is in the same debt status pickle, but it does
not have nearly the manufacturing capacity and labor force of the GM
behemoth, and thus can more quickly adapt to changing circumstances.
Daimler-Chrysler began significant restructuring in 2001 and is now
churning out profits.
Health care costs are only a part of GM's a plight. The company has
never fully recovered from the disastrous tenure of its former
chairman, Roger Smith. He went on a business acid trip and decided GM's
future would be better as a computer and financial services company.
The flashbacks alone still cause corporate hallucinations and Smith's
legacy of failure still hasn't been entirely purged. Smith was a
strategic idiot and a first-class jerk but he never had to deal with
the consequences of his follies.
Now GM's is spinning out of control. Its market share is way down with
consumers shying away from gas-guzzling products. In the growing
Chinese market, GM's herd of SUVs may not meet fuel efficiency
standards there.
The company consistently opposes government efforts to limit air
pollution and greenhouse emissions. This tactic works with the
Busheviks and GM whores in the U.S. Congress, but in other parts of the
world where the health threats of pollution are taken more seriously,
the company's cars and trucks with their filth spewing tailpipes are
way out of step.
The company is still the world's number one automaker, but just barely
with Japan's Toyota braced to soon capture that distinction. There is
little support in Washington for restricting imports, but a case can be
made that foreign competitors -- with the help of their governments --
make it difficult for North American manufacturers to compete.
GM has too many nameplates and continues to make cars people don't
want. GM -- more than any other automaker -- is addicted to costly
incentives aimed at bribing reluctant consumers to buy unwanted
products. The company hopes some new lines will help, but getting those
products to market, start up costs and the time required to introduce
them won't help the near-term bottom line that, for now, is
hemorrhaging red ink.
GM lost $1.1 billion in the first quarter and has plans to slash 25,000
manufacturing jobs. Many of the company's wounds are self-inflicted and
the cultural arrogance among many GM executives still prevails in spite
of their dismal performance.
The company is spending $5.6 billion per year to pay for health
insurance for its 1.1 million current and retired employees. That tacks
on $1,500 to the cost of each GM car and truck rolling off the assembly
line. Cutting those costs is a top corporate priority, although many
other factors have much greater impact on GM's profitability.
The company is threatening to reduce health care benefits with or
without the permission of the UAW. The union's present contract
protecting those benefits doesn't expire until 2007, but GM is
demanding concessions now.
Company Chairman Rick Wagoner says he wants to achieve the concessions
"in cooperation with the UAW," but even with the union leadership on
board, selling concessions to the membership will be difficult at best.
Wagoner and other desperate American auto company executives are
ignoring the true nature of the problem -- Bush's refusal to even
acknowledge, let alone do something -- about the catastrophic failure
of our health care system.
Paul Krugman, the Princeton economist and New York Times columnist is a
national treasure in explaining just how flawed the system is and how
Americans pay considerably more and get substantially less than people
in more enlightened countries do.
Krugman is a prophet of reform and his fact driven analysis shows how
we squander health care dollars on bureaucratic shuffling. He notes
that "much of our health care spending is devoted to passing the buck:
trying to get someone else to pay the bills."
Krugman cites a World Health Organization report that shows
administrative costs in U.S. private health insurance companies eat up
15 percent of the money, "but only 4 percent of the budgets of public
insurance companies, which consist mainly of Medicare and Medicaid."
Krugman also points to a "New England Journal of Medicine" estimate
that found that "administrative costs took 31 cents out of every dollar
the United States spent on health care, compared with only 17 cents in
Canada" with its single payer system.
In the United States, we are spending 13 percent of our gross national
income on health care and yet in the Netherlands, where everyone is
covered, they spend only 8.5 percent.
The big auto companies with their older work forces, union contract
obligations and large number of retired workers pay a huge price for
the wasteful U.S. health care system.
Bush likes to help the automakers. His chief-of-staff, Andrew Card, is
a former GM executive and auto industry lobbyist. GM's Wagoner, Ford's
boss, William Ford Jr., and the cadre of martini-sipping auto
executives from Detroit-area country clubs were are all big Bush
campaign contributors.
Wagoner and Ford both publicly endorsed Bush tax cuts for the super
rich. Both men are considerably enriched as a result of the raid on the
U=2ES. Treasury that's produced record deficits working class Americans
and their children are now stuck paying for. As a result, ironically,
they will have less money to buy cars.
Bush is more than willing to toss the auto industry the bones of lax
fuel efficiency standards and permitting more dirty air emissions at
the cost of public health. But he won't do a damn thing to change our
catastrophically failed health care system, which is doing irreparable
harm to the auto industry.
And no leading figure from the U.S. auto industry will say the bloody
obvious: We need a national health care system to remain competitive in
the world marketplace, and Bush is standing in the way of any
discussion or consideration of that practical reality.
Instead, with GM leading the charge, they are going to try to take it
out of the hides of the autoworkers that fought for decades to get
decent health insurance benefits. As a nation, we should strive for all
Americans to have the medical benefits UAW members have, not attempt to
diminish the autoworkers' plans to some common denominator of poor and
more costly coverage.
We recently experienced a little-noticed milestone in the North
American auto industry that underlines what's wrong with our health
care system. For more than 100 years, Michigan produced more cars than
anywhere else. No longer. That distinction now belongs to the Province
of Ontario and the Canadian national health care system is the primary
reason for the shift of auto production there. The real Motor City
these days is in Toronto.
U=2ES. auto executives know lower health care costs fuel the advantage of
making cars in Canada, but they won't say that out loud for fear of
offending the Busheviks or being labeled "socialists." The president of
GM of Canada in 2002 did sign a joint letter with the president of the
Canadian Auto Workers proclaiming, "It is vitally important that the
publicly funded health care system be preserved and renewed."
Canada's system is far from perfect but it is a much more efficient and
cost-effective way to provide health care than Bush's prescription-a
tonic for corporate interests, but poisonous public policy.
The Canadian Auto Workers union estimates the health system there saves
the automakers about $4 per hour per worker. Buzz Hargrove, the
ever-so-smart and progressive president of the CAW, knows this and
won't even think of concessions. He told the Detroit Free Press that in
contract negotiations this summer, "We are not going to go backwards,
not on wages, pensions or other matters. We go forward with talks and
make progress for our workers." Hargrove also says unbridled imports
pose as far more serious threat for Detroit's automakers. "Their
problem is not health care. Their real problem is trade and falling
market share. You aren't losing sales just because of some $1,500
per-vehicle health care cost. That's peanuts considering they put
incentives on the hood to make up for that. It's about unfair trade,"
Hargrove said.
But GM is hellbent to cut health care costs and lay off workers. That
means those of us who do work and have federal and state taxes deducted
from our checks will be paying more because as Paul Krugman points out
in our system, "Medical costs act as a tax on employment." GM reduces
its head count but "the insurance premiums saved by firing workers are
no saving at all to society as a whole: Somebody still ends up paying
the bills," Krugman wisely observes.
Charles E. Wilson, the former GM chairman, took a little heat when
President Dwight Eisenhower nominated him to become secretary of
defense. At his Senate confirmation hearing old "Engine Charley" might
have too closely linked the fates of his company and the nation. Often
misquoted, what Wilson actually said was, "For years I thought what was
good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa." His
views then were hardly sinister. And now, when it comes to health care
costs, what's bad for the country is also bad for General Motors.
The Busheviks like the Wal-Mart model for health care coverage. Provide
as little as possible and, if you can, stick the taxpayers with the tab
for uninsured workers and tack it on to the government deficit.
In terms of sales, Wal-Mart replaced GM as the nation's biggest
corporation a few years ago. But no one will ever compare Wal-Mart to
"Generous Motors," GM's now dated nickname. Wal-Mart offers health
insurance to fewer than half its employees. And the price of the
coverage the workers must pay is so high, many of those eligible for
the benefit simply can't afford it.
A United Food and Commercial Workers union study found that, "More than
60 percent of Wal-Mart's employees -- 600, 000 people -- are forced to
get health insurance from the government or through spouses=E2 plans, or
live without any health insurance."
The huge retailer notoriously shifts health care costs to other
employers or the taxpayers. GM and every other business that does
provide health insurance, along with every working American, subsidize
Wal-Mart and the cheap, exploitative bastards who own the company.
More than 10,000 Wal-Mart employees in Tennessee are on the state's
expanded Medicaid program. Wal-Mart workers in California rely on the
state to provide $32 million annually in health-related services. In
Georgia, more than 10,000 children of Wal-Mart employees are enrolled
in a state health insurance program for families living on incomes
below the federal poverty levels. Doesn't Wal-Mart just make you proud
to be an American?
The net worth of the Walton family, owners of Wal-Mart, is now pegged
at $98 billion. Bush's tax cuts have made them even richer. Spending
just 1 percent of the family wealth could provide every Wal-Mart
employee with affordable health insurance.
The Bush annual deficit that covers for his tax cuts -- largely
benefiting the wealthiest Americans -- is now pushing $500 billion.
That number too is "unsustainable." But we'd get a much better bang for
our deficit dollar spending it on national health care.
It is a far more fair way to spend that money. That way, every American
could have the same health care coverage as the Walton family, the
members of GM's board of directors, and, of course, George W. Bush and
the members of Congress.
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