From Bloomberg, here's a devastating article from a UAW-worker-turned-reporter. Even if gas drops to 99 cents/gallon, that doesn't address the bigger issue.Along with Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC, GM is staggering under a combined $114 billion in retiree health liabilities shouldered as workers hold the union and companies to the promise of a pension and lifetime health care.I've predicted for years now that we will have nationalized medical care, done under the guise of saving US manufacturing. I don't think it matters at this point whether it's Obama or McCain, it is coming. It will be sold to us as the patriotic thing to do (The "US Manufacturing Rescue Act of 2009"), complete with concerts from struggling artists like John Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen, who will create some annoying song with lots of other wealthy musicians. Watch as the Big 3 jettison their pension plans onto us taxpayers, then dump the cost for medical insurance onto our laps. And quite frankly, with $700 billion (most likely far more) billed to our children for bailing out the Wall Street morons, nationalizing medical care and bailing out pensions is small potatoes.
Any politician who says this is not our future is full of crap. It is coming, and you few remaining libertarian capitalists out there will be soothed with the dulcet government refrain of "There now, that wasn't so bad, was it?" as the IV drip is inserted.
16 comments:
I'm afraid that you are dead spot on Lou. Sadly, Atlas Shrugged was dead spot on with some of its predictions of how the US would turn out. Us handful of real capitalists are a dying breed.
The Republicans long ago abandoned any pretense of capitalism or even free enterprise and came in favor of a controlled economy. That was stupid. Once the controls failed as they always do, the democrats are able to hang it around "deregulation" even though it wasn't un-regulation, just different regulation.
I have thought the same thing about healthcare, Lou.
OK, that's it, I'm moving to Canada :-)
Though with all this newly acquired debt some politicians might oppose on the grounds that we just can't afford it. I guess that never stopped a politician from legislating his dreams into action. We'll see...
Tesla does have a good point. All the alternatives are worse than here. Though if Nicole Kidman needed a body buffer I'd consider a move to Australia.
You are spot on, but I wonder how many people realize a true national health care system is Medicaid, not Medicare.
Medicare will pay for anything if there is a billing code.
Medicaid heavily restricts drugs via a formulary and (informally) rations care.
We will see formal rationing in any nationalized health care system
(e.g. over 65? - no bypass for you!)
"Roger and Me" coming home to roost.
Anon above is right, crappy management and an adverserial relationship between them and employees (not that either side is an innocent party there) makes for bad products regardless of industry. They frankly had it coming.
NPR of all the places tonight had one of the most enlightening segments. An economist started off by saying the era of the free market philosophy is dead. They then went on to describe why it is indeed a sad passing and that socialist/fascist intervention in the economy has never been a good long term idea. Plus she added a good point how the Democrats never embraced the economic freedom idea and the Republicans have only bee paying it lip service for the last 30 years and even the Liberterians have quit harping on it in favor of fighting for the right to screw or smoke weed. It was beautiful. Simply beautiful. So now we live in a world where NPR is presenting one of the more elegant eulogies for the free marketers ever, we are indeed in bizarro world.
I'm not sure if you noticed this, Lou, but the article you referenced is over 1 year old. The retiree health liabilities for each Detroit automaker are going into a separate health care trust, independent of the company, that will be up and running in 2010. Considering how scary things are right now, this may be a blessing. And any equity allocation used for the health care trust assets is likely to start at a very low level. If this trust had started up a couple years earlier....ugh, I don't even want to think about it.
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Healthcare should be public, anyway. I'm tired of paying for everyone else's, be that via taxes or additional charges / fees for things I use and buy.
It's not "libertarian" to have to depend on your employer for health coverage, anyway ("oh please Daddy...don't cancel my coverage"). The current system is biased against the single payer, the person who prefers to be self-employed and independent.
How many "libertarians" out there shell out their own money for their health coverage, anyway? How many of them have to do so without benefit of a group plan via their employers (a/k/a corporate "parents")?
We have public law enforcement, public roads, public schools, public fire and safety - would you suggest that those things be privatized? There are some basic services a government should provide, and healthcare is one of them.
>>Healthcare should be public, anyway. I'm tired of paying for everyone else's, be that via taxes or additional charges / fees for things I use and buy.>>
When I composed that last post, I meant to point out that I've always had to pay for my own health coverage, in the 25 years I've spent as a working person. That's why I don't like paying for everyone else's while having to buy my own subpar coverage (I've long been both self-employed and employed by organizations that require me to pay for my healthcare, and for the past 17 years, I've had less than adequate coverage...just TRY and find affordable health insurance in NJ).
We end up paying for everyone else's coverage anyway through taxes, surcharges, price hikes, additional fees, etc. We should have a single-payer system, separate from wherever you work or whomever you work for. And we need a public system, because private insurers are motivated to deny or limit coverage as much as possible.
The Republicans long ago abandoned any pretense of capitalism or even free enterprise and came in favor of a controlled economy. That was stupid. Once the controls failed as they always do, the democrats are able to hang it around "deregulation" even though it wasn't un-regulation, just different regulation.
This is the very nice post. i really like this. keep it up.
I think that the crisis of those car companies was created by their few quality in comparison to another countries' cars.
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