The good news is that national health care is coming. Okay, so that's (obviously) just my opinion – I don't have a crystal ball or anything. (By the way, if anyone knows where to get a crystal ball, email me.) But I think I may be right about this one. God knows I'm due to be right sooner or later.
I think national health care is coming for the simplest reason of all. The reason, in fact, that most things happen in America. Money. Health care costs a lot of money. So much, in fact, that American corporations can't afford to continue to foot the bill. Certainly not if they want to stay competitive.
An NPR report today discusses upcoming talks between General Motors and the United Auto Workers. The goal? Well, among other things, reducing the cost of health care. The fact is that GM is selling more cars than at any time in its history, yet it is still only just breaking even. GM lost 4.8 billion dollars in the fourth quarter of 2006, and $8.6 billion in 2005 (cited here). You do that for a couple of years, and pretty soon you're talking about real money. Now, you can argue at length about the poor quality of GM's products (I have, in fact many times, including on this forum). But there's no denying that a BIG part of the reason that GM, and Ford and Chrysler, haven't been able to turn a profit is the skyrocketing costs associated with meeting their employee and retiree health care commitments.
For every dollar that General Motors spends on health care, Toyota spends one cent. One cent. In other words, GM spends one hundred times more on health care than Toyota. How can that be? It seems pretty simple to me: Japan has national health care. So, in essence, Toyota only has to pay for health care for its American employees (of which there are around 38,000, out of a total 286,000 Toyota employees worldwide). The Japanese government foots the bill for the rest. And, yes, if you happen to be a naysayer of national health care, the Japanese pay higher taxes than we do. But I'll bet the farm that the increase in taxes of a national health care system would be more than offset by the savings in health insurance premiums that most people would realize. (Ha! Joke's on you, naysayers – I don't even have a farm!) Of course, Japan also doesn't get involved in long, drawn-out, illegal and pointless wars with innocent countries (well, at least not since the 1940's), so they have more tax revenue to direct toward social services. But that's another diary entirely.
The only way that the American auto industry – and, indeed, American industry in general – is going to be competitive in a global economy is by taking the health care monkey off its back. And the only way to do that is by instituting some form of national health care. To anyone who says it's too expensive I say look at Japan and Germany. Yes, they have their problems – who doesn't? But they have a standard of living every bit as good as in the US (maybe better), and they are the second and third most powerful economies in the world. And they did it with national health care.
In the end, national health care will come to pass not because it's the right thing to do, and not because of grass roots organizing, but because the big, powerful, and wealthy corporations – the guys who pay all those lobbyists on K Street to "persuade" Congress to do their bidding – will demand it.
Now that's irony.