Another Reason For Single Payer Care, Eh?

To recap, here is the summary of what was accomplished in the settlement last week between General Motors and the United Auto Workers Union in the UAW’s 41-hour strike last week…

The agreement, which ended a 41-hour strike against GM, shifts $51 billion in potential healthcare liability off GM's balance sheet, puts new workers on a lower pay scale, freezes wages but guarantees bonuses, promises to keep investing in U.S. production and limits how long idled workers get nearly full pay in a so-called jobs bank.

However, this article from the Canadian Press tells us of the following impact on the Canadian auto industry as a result…

…the U.S. deal represents "a very dark day for the Canadian automotive sector," in the initial reaction of leading industry analyst Dennis DesRosiers.

"GM and very shortly Ford and Chrysler will have created about a $25-per-hour cost advantage to build vehicles in the U.S. instead of Canada," DesRosiers said shortly after last Wednesday's agreement.

By the weekend, as more details of the American settlement came out, DesRosiers downsized this estimated gap to $10 an hour, "understanding that this is a moving target."

And concerning the precedent set in the agreement to begin moving away from employer-based health insurance (a move I would only encourage with a reliable substitute already in place, though that move continues regardless of my opinion or anyone else’s), here is what former Clinton Administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich has to say…

I say let's just scrap the employer based system altogether. Use the 200 million dollars or so of annual tax deductions the system now relies on (for employers and employees) to help lower-income Americans, who aren't poor enough to qualify for Medicaid, afford basic health insurance. And then allow anybody who wants to reduce their health-insurance costs to join them -- along with the retirees , government workers, and poor, all of whom are now in government-organized health care plans -- in a SuperMedicare plan that would have so many members it could negotiate with drug companies, suppliers, and hospitals for bargain-basement rates.

It's win-win-win. Employers no longer pay rising health-care costs. Employees get affordable health insurance even when they're between jobs or have no steady employer. Nobody loses any options they now have. The only losers are the big insurance companies, hospital chains, and drug companies. Seems like a small price to pay, doesn't it?

Sounds like Reich has been paying attention to what John Edwards has been talking about (or vice versa maybe?).

And even better, we won’t have to hear employers whining about having to offshore jobs because of the prohibitive benefit costs for hiring U.S. workers (I don’t believe that is a hindrance worth taking work off our shores for a majority of employers, though).

Though I’m sorry for the Canadian auto workers, I would only ask that they please not consider us a bunch of “hosers” for trying to do right by our workforce and accomplish some long-overdue health care reform.