Or the person saying having one customer, the gov’t, would make healthcare more expensive? No, rates go down when people use collective bargaining. Look at how small businesses are coming together to get lower health insurance rates.

Also, everyone is saying, why don’t Toyota and Honda have these costs? Because they’re LEGACY costs. Honda and Toyota have not been producing cars in this country near as long, or in as large numbers, as GM has. As they continue, they will start to accrue these costs as well.

Having an NHS may impact the car company in a good way, like the article says, but it may not affect the bottom line for the car company’s employee, who has to foot the higher tax bill to pay for a nationalized system. Still, I think part of the solution is the union contract. I don’t think, as has been suggested, that it should be every man for himself, when it comes to healthcare, because your employer can probably negotiate better group rates, than if you bought a policy off the internet just for your family. But, that doesn’t mean that your employer will subsidize all, or even part, of the healthcare cost. Sometimes, a nice group rate is all you get, and the entire cost of the insurance is passed on to the employee.

I’m not ready to call myself a “union basher,” but the union has to bend, before the U.S. car industry breaks.

- poor quality
- poor design

this sums up for poor products. and if you want to sell poor products, the price you can sell them for will be poor too… and noone ever grew rich getting paid poorly and spending high (what they do, due to uaw)

so, the uaw contributes to the bad situation, but its not the core problem… of course, after years and years of poor products, its hard for them to turn around…

The problems lie in
1) Weak political intervention to reign in healthcare cost and doctor’s insurance
2) High salary for doctor in the US
3) Ambulance chasers and bogus lawsuits, when will this country learn to make the loser of a lawsuit pay court cost and attorney fee?
4) High salary for management position in GM
5) Wall street expectation for a company to grow year after year and to push the bottom line
6) Union contract

NHS is supposed to provide BASIC healthcare to all, and it should at least be available as an option. If you are wealthier and can afford to buy better healthcare, then more power to you. Don’t misunderstand that NHS only benefits the “lazy” peopl, there are disabled and single-parent family, for example,who just can’t afford the high cost of healthcare anymore.

NHS is not communism. You want to know communism, research North Korea before you write. NHS is a social program, existing within a capitalistic society. You have the power not to use it and the choice to purchase better private coverage. The government will also have to follow the market economy in deciding how much money they need to have to run it and that market economy involves insurance companies and hospitals alike. So no, the government is not the only customer, unless in doing so, congress eliminates the possibility to purchase private insurance.

By no means will I ever believe anyone can morally, ethically, and justifiably make the ludicrous amounts of money they rake in year after year. I am just shy of supporting wage caps for CEOs. But I happen to believe in the open market more so. The reasons these CEOs make so much are buried in the past 50 years of evolving American business. As our society slowly took on the “gotta have it” attitude, ethical behavior is slowly taking a back seat. The consumers are just as much to blame as the CEOs. The consumers are the ones who pay thier paychecks. But “gotta have it”, consumers will now buy products from businesses that they know are corrupt. Gotta have it. That wasn’t always the case. Today corporations like Comcast can dole out the worse customer service in America and yet be one of the richest. If consumers put their foot down, and chose otherwise, it wouldn’tbe the case.

Wanting a union for increased wages because the CEOs are making bundles is hardly a reason. They will make their money no matter what. It’sthe ‘gotta have it’ consumers that all lose in the end. That includes everyone reading this.

It’s time to bring back the 90% income tax bracket for anyone making in excess of say 100million per year!!

And the Tyco guy should have been drawn and quartered. How many poor black kids have to die of tooth abscesses while these whores are wallowing in $6K shower curtains for 5th avenue penhouses they stay in two weeks a year? 40million Americans have no health insurance while these guys are worrying about three dollars per gallon jet fuel for their Gulfstreams (and a shot to Travolta’s more or less empty 34 seat Boeing 707 fer crying out loud).

You want healthcare? You want gun control (on the Australian model, take them away…lookie lookie for constitutional amendment, the second amendment CAN be amended!) vote for Obama.

You want fewer taxes, more death and destruction, more Iraq (what, Iran next?), more and more government surveillance, etc., vote for the other party.

Btw having lived in the UK and US (amongst a couple of dozen countries), I can easely say that NHS is better than Blue Sheild or Kaiser…

jsherm007,
Sorry, wrong. Toyota makes money because they design build and market cars that PEOPLE ACTUALLY WANT!
To all the usual illinformed union bashers. Simple question.
Name the last car model designed and marketed by UAW workers………..still waiting……….
Oh, right. They just build them EXACTLY like they’re told. The executives responsible for making the bad decisions, putting out the wrong car, marketing it badly, ARE NOT the ones being blamed for GM losing money. ARE NOT the ones being asked to take cuts in pay and benefits. And, ARE NOT the ones laid off when the company does badly.
Big news flash here. Knocking another grand off crappy cars WILL NOT save the company. I wish the union bashing mouth breathers would think about these facts for more than a second.
Nice field of work, IF your in management.

(EDITED FOR LANGUAGE)

What is the common denominator of all domestic brands? Unions. What is the common denominator of the Japanese and Korean brands? No unions. I think there may be something there….

There is a huge faction in society that has a real problem with the gimmees. Everyone wants a freebie. What so many forget is that competition spurs innovation and improvements. Competition generates lower prices. Nationalized health care creates one customer, the government. How effective is one customer at creating a lower price? Couple that with the widely popular belief that most government services are screwed up and disfunctional. What about the VA hospital shit happening now? But somehow US nationalized health care would be the exception to the rule? ANNNGGG! It hasn’t worked in any country thus far and it won’t work here. Social-ism is for nazis.

It’s the same with unions. We live in a country today that protects even the brain dead through the court system. To say unions help protect workers from anything is BS. Safety standards, hours, wages are all protected today through other means. The unions are used to inflate wages to absurd levels so the leaders can skim off the top of their members’ paychecks.

Toyota has not got the same problem, makes more money per car then GM, and well cash flow is not a problem.
-why? because their employees are efficient
-why? because they work and design their processes well
-why? because they don’t keep employees who don’t perform
-why? because the employees must earn the right to stay employed – it’s not a god given right to have a job.
-why? because they don’t have a union contract that protects and supports the lazy worker.

There are much better models of national health insurance in Europe than the NHS. I am unaware of a bad model anywhere in Europe except the UK.

I am a salaried employee with employer subsidized health insurance. It is my understanding that most salaried employees have similar benefits. There is no way on Earth that we are giving that up. We have higher earnings than the typical wage slave. Is it your position that wage slaves should fend for themselves while their better paid brothers in management and the professional ranks have their health subsidized by their employers?

The true solution lies in between: to force employees everywhere in the United States to wean off their misguided belief that employers are supposed to provide benefits for them. Employees should be paid in a salary and nothing else, and it is the individual’s responsibility to shop for their own health and retirement plans.

The best thing that GM can do is to join the UAW and other US-based manufacturers to lobby Congress for national health insurance. Either President Obama or President Clinton will give them the support they need.

Amazing how as said in previous posts, the union squeezes the company it works for like a boa constrictor killing it’s host. The only way to survive is breaking the union. I’m so excited for the 2007 labor negotiations and I don’t even work in the auto industry!