It Ain't Free

Someone has to pay for it. Knight-Ridder (01.13.05):

"Maryland's bold new law requiring Wal-Mart and other large companies to increase health care coverage of their workers has given new life to supporters trying to pass similar legislation nationwide. The state's Legislature on Thursday passed a law that directs firms with more than 10,000 employees [specifically, K-Mart] to spend at least 8 percent of their payrolls on employee health benefits." Maryland law targeting Wal-Mart could ripple across U.S.

"In at least 30 other states, plans are under way to draft and introduce similar 'fair share' laws." Many, if not all of these laws, require that companies "not meeting the payment threshold...pay the difference into a state fund to assist the uninsured." Why is this such a hot-button issue? Because the "percentage of businesses that offer health insurance has declined for five straight years", while the "cost of health insurance premiums has gone up 73 percent", according to a 2005 report by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Predictably, the free marketeers are dead-set against the legislation, "saying they could scare new jobs away and cause the number of existing jobs to dwindle if cash-strapped employers can't afford the mandated coverage." Helen Darling, president of the Washington Business Group, said "[State legislatures] ought to be working on a way to deal with the uninsured, and this doesn't make sense as a way to do it." When you think about it, Ms. Darling's statment makes no sense. This legislation is not targeted towards folks who are already uninsured. It's primary purpose is to force very large companies to provide meaningful health care coverage to their employees. If a company doesn't, having to pay the difference into an uninsured assistance fund is the penalty, not the purpose, of these laws. What it really boils down to is that meaningful employee health care coverage is expensive. The more Knobboy, Inc., doesn't have to pay in benefits for the ungrateful commie bastards who work for us, the better our bottom line is going to be. Pure and simple. And the costs of health care is killing the bottom line. Washington Post (02.11.05):

"American manufacturers are losing their ability to compete in the global marketplace in large measure because of the crushing burden of health care costs, General Motors Corp. chairman and chief executive G. Richard Wagoner Jr. said yesterday as he called on corporate and government leaders to find 'some serious medicine' for the nation's ailing health system. After spending several years on the health policy sidelines, Wagoner is launching a mini media blitz, hoping the competitiveness argument will be the one that finally prompts lawmakers to take on an increasingly expensive system rife with inefficiencies and inequities." U.S. Firms Losing Health Care Battle, GM Chairman Says

The biggest issue? "'Only in health care does bad service and bad quality get paid for in the same manner as good service and good quality,' said Humana Inc. chief executive Michael B. McCallister, chairman of the Business Roundtable's health care task force." For a more recent example of abject incompetence being waged in the name of a competitive free market, ask yourself this: how well has the health care industry implemented the new Medicare prescription drug plan? Though GM isn't quite ready to back national healthcare for the US, it sure likes it in Canada. In These Times (04.27.05):

"Yet just across the Detroit River in Ontario, [GM's] subsidiary - like the subsidiaries of Ford, DaimlerChrysler and other U.S. firms - strongly endorses Canada’s national health system. 'The Canadian plan has been a significant advantage for investing in Canada,' says GM Canada spokesman David Patterson, noting that in the United States, GM spends $1,400 per car on health benefits. Indeed, with the provinces sharing 75 percent of the cost of Canadian healthcare, it’s no surprise that GM, Ford and Chrysler have all been shifting car production across the border at such a rate that the name 'Motor City' should belong to Windsor, not Detroit." GM's Healthcare Double Standard

In fact, GM's "top executives in Canada, along with the top execs of Ford, Chrysler and a host of other U.S.-owned subsidiaries in Canada, actually have been lobbying the provincial and federal government to expand the system to include other services such as pharmacy and home health care - and to increase funding of what is known in Canada as 'Medicare.'" Italics in original. Consider also Toyota's recent decision about where its new billion dollar North American production facility would be built. Canadian workers are cheaper to employ "partly thanks to the taxpayer-funded health-care system in Canada, said [Canadian] federal Industry Minister David Emmerson. 'Most people don't think of our health-care system as being a competitive advantage,' he said." For something completely different, Toyota's decision was also driven by the cost of training US workers. In addition to Toyota, both "Nissan and Honda have encountered difficulties getting new plants up to full production in recent years in Mississippi and Alabama due to an untrained - and often illiterate - workforce. In Alabama, trainers had to use 'pictorials' to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech plant equipment." "'The educational level and the skill level of the people down there is so much lower than it is in Ontario,'" said Gerry Fedchun, president of the Canadian Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association. Well this sure oughtta help. AP (12.14.05):

"Lawmakers voted Wednesday to cut federal aid to education for the first time in a decade as the House narrowly passed a spending bill that would freeze or cut back a wide variety of domestic programs. Programs funded under President Bush's No Child Left Behind education law would face a 4 percent cut, while aid for special education and Title I funding for disadvantaged children would be frozen at last year's levels, assuming the across-the-board cut is imposed." Congress Approves Education Cuts