Posted on 08/08/2005 5:42:59 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
The news that Toyota is locating its next North American auto plant in Canada rather than in the U.S. shouldn't have come as such a shock to American bigwigs.
Anyone who has been paying even a teeny bit of attention to the problems plaguing American auto companies knows that their No. 1 financial problem is the cost of health insurance. There's even concern that General Motors will find itself filing for bankruptcy if it can't get its UAW workers to pick up a larger share of health insurance costs.
That's a problem that has beset more and more American businesses in recent years as the cost of health care far outstrips inflation and the ability of companies to pass those costs to consumers.
So, if you're Toyota, why wouldn't you spurn generous offers from U.S. cities and locate in Canada, where the government provides everyone with health insurance?
Even General Motors, which operates several plants in Canada, has been lobbying the Canadians not to change their universal health plan, an idea that surfaces in Canadian politics from time to time. GM and other corporations like it just the way it is, thank you.
Obviously, Canadian health insurance isn't free to the companies. They pay higher taxes to help foot the overall bill. Nevertheless, their total costs are far lower than what they pay for health insurance plans in the United States, where the cost of administration to pay for the private interests in our convoluted system reach more than 20 percent of the total bill. That money alone could help kick-start national health insurance in our own country.
Paul Krugman, the New York Times columnist, pointed out the other day that the result of all this is to give Canada more jobs in industries like auto companies, which in the U.S. pay health benefits to workers, and fewer jobs in industries that don't provide those benefits. In the U.S. the effect is just the opposite: fewer jobs with benefits, more jobs without because the incentive to go out of the country isn't as great for those who don't provide health benefits.
Meanwhile, as the number of uninsured workers increases in the U.S., the American taxpayer is forced to pick up more and more of the tab for the poorest of those uninsured through programs like Medicaid. It's a vicious circle.
Someday we're going to face the facts. The argument over a national health program is no longer whether it amounts to "socialized" medicine in the capitalist U.S. It's now whether our refusal to enact a national system - Medicare, for example, for all - is going to wind up devastating our economy.
It isn't that there'd be more jobs. There'd just be fewer people to apply for them.
The other side of the story would be tax breaks for the real estate the factory sits on and other hidden tax breaks on labor that are probably being subsidized to get some paying jobs in the Peoples Republic of Canada.
If frivolous lawsuits and other bogus claims against insurance companies by liberal lawyers were cut in half, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
Of even greater interest is the plant in Baja, Mexico which is almost fully robotic, with very few employees, and a private army to guard the facility in a lawless land. Toyota placed it there to keep it under the radar. I know some of the executives in Georgetown, KY, Toyota's largest plant, and have been keeping up with the progress. Better than low corporate costs for health care are No costs for health care. If this plant meets projections and is replicated by other auto makers, it could mean the end of auto manufacturing and their unions as we know them.
Of even greater interest is the plant in Baja, Mexico which is almost fully robotic, with very few employees, and a private army to guard the facility in a lawless land. Toyota placed it there to keep it under the radar. I know some of the executives in Georgetown, KY, Toyota's largest plant, and have been keeping up with the progress. Better than low corporate costs for health care are No costs for health care. If this plant meets projections and is replicated by other auto makers, it could mean the end of auto manufacturing and their unions as we know them.
If this is right, I suppose we need to enact a "national system" for food, housing, clothing, and all other necessities.
This must explain why Canada and Europe have lower unemployment rates than the US... oh wait...
Good one! Thanks.
That's from a 1947 British Punch magazine. Funny, liberalism just doesn't change.
Unfortunately I think healthcare may be doomed at this stage of the game. I work in the field and we're past the halfway point to socialization now.
I have Hillary Care, otherwise known as Tri-Care; what she tried to foist on the entire nation and in true Klintoon fashion stuck the military with when she couldn't get her way with the nation.
If every purchase had to be approved by a third party, that could well be the case. It is estimated that the cost in filling out claim forms alone is 140 billion dollars a year.
I am just plain embarassed to admit that I got a BSEE in 1970 and an MBA in 1977 from the UW Madison!
Well hold on, because it may be coming to us sooner than we think. Is the beast is elected, I believe she will make it happen.
see post#9 for what you'll get.
So just for auto and homeowners insurance.
Hey, hey, don't crush that canary! One step at a time!
Once Kennedy, Pelosi and Dingle get ahold of the system, they should be able to save 140 billion, no sweat. They might even let us have 1 or 2 of those billion back.
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