Actually they are both wrong. As long as the biggest contributors to the cost of medical education are the drug companies, health care will be a problem. They do not teach health in the medical schools, they teach curing disease which is not the same thing. Knowledge of good nutrition is extremely rare, healthy eating habits are rarer. The problem is not the health system, but the food. JTF has lots of real good information on this in the smalls farms library. The information is not new, but few people are interested in being healthy, they would rather follow trends.
Bright Blessings,
Kim
At 12:53 PM 8/12/2005, you wrote:
Hi all,
Does this mean that the most Republicans were wrong about market driven health care and Hilary Clinton was right?
Maybe not but it sure seems that way, doesn't it.
Tom Irwin
- From: Keith Addison [ mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
- To: biofuel@sustainablelists.org
- Sent: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 16:28:15 -0300
- Subject: [Biofuel] The Auto Industry's Last Hope
- http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050811/the_auto_industrys_last_hope.php
- The Auto Industry's Last Hope
- Greg Tarpinian
- August 11, 2005
- Greg Tarpinian is the president and executive director, Labor
- Research Association, a New York City-based non-profit research and
- advocacy organization that provides research and educational services
- for trade unions.
- After pushing one of the largest companies in the world to the brink
- of disaster, General Motors executives began their annual meeting
- with UAW leaders on April 14 with plans to intensify their push for
- health care benefit cuts.
- GM announced on March 16 that it would report an $850 million loss
- for the first quarter of 2005 and earn $1 to $2 per share for the
- year, down from its earlier forecast of $4 to $5 per share. The
- company's cash flow is a negative $2 billion. GM's bonds now are
- rated just above junk, and it still owes billions to its underfunded
- pension and retiree health plans.
- Ford cut its profit forecast for the year by 14 percent on April 8
- and announced that it will not meet its 2006 goal of $7 billion in
- pretax profit. Ratings agencies are now poised to downgrade Ford's
- credit too.
- Both companies will cut production and accelerate layoffs for their
- white-collar workers. GM's salaried workforce has already been hit
- with substantial job cuts, wage freezes and higher benefit
- contributions.
- There is no ready solution for the financial problems that may easily
- overwhelm these companies. Ford is sitting on an inventory of almost
- 900,000 vehicles; GM faces substantial overcapacity. Although GM
- executives continue to claim that they can regain market share,
- industry analysts uniformly agree that GM and Ford have permanently
- lost their positions as the leading car companies in the United
- States
- U.S. market share for the American automakers fell from 65 percent in
- 1994 to 42 percent last year. Toyota displaced Ford as the
- second-largest car seller in the country for reasons that have
- nothing to do with Ford's higher benefit costs. The U.S. automakers
- have been digging their own graves for years, but GM faces the
- highest costs because of its misguided expansion two decades ago. The
- U.S. automakers have squandered market share and mismanaged
- resources, but would like to blame benefit costs for the financial
- crisis they have been courting for two decades.
- The financial crisis born of mismanagement leaves the companies
- facing costs they cannot cover, including health care costs.
- GM paid out $5.2 billion for health care benefits in 2004 and expects
- to pay out $5.8 billion this year. These benefit costs are part of
- the total compensation negotiated in union contracts that traded what
- would have been higher wage increases for better benefit provisions.
- Health benefits, including retiree benefits, are simply wages
- delivered in a different form or, in the case of retirees, deferred
- for payment later. The U.S. automakers are now pressing for the
- equivalent of a wage cut for its union workers and take-backs from
- its retirees.
- The costs have been exacerbated by the unwillingness of the Bush
- administration and Congress to address the catastrophic rise of
- health care costs in the United States. GM's $73 billion liability
- for retiree health benefits could be covered three times over by the
- amount the United States squanders every year on administrative costs
- for its private health care system.
- China and India will begin exporting cars to the United States within
- the next few years. Carmakers in both countries benefit from national
- health care systems that pay for employee benefits with public funds.
- The U.S. automakers are moving more production to Canada where a
- national health care program provides coverage for workers and their
- families for less than one-fifth of the cost of health benefits on
- the U.S. side of the border.
- Benefit costs account for 28.8 percent of compensation costs for
- private sector production workers in the United States, compared with
- 17.0 percent in Japan, 16.6 percent in Canada and 17.6 percent in the
- United Kingdom. Three-fourths of the difference in benefit costs
- stems from the private health insurance system in the United States
- The Bush administration has a choice. It can preside over the
- dissolution of what remains of the U.S. auto industry or it can take
- the first steps toward a national solution for the health care cost
- crisis that is distorting labor markets, driving down disposable
- income, leaving millions of Americans without health care and
- creating the largest competitive disadvantage that U.S. companies now
- face.
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