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.
If you can convince me that Social Security is a better investment with lower costs and better returns than the private investment industry, I'll buy into the whole socialized medicine scam.
If you think the way to save money on filling out forms is to let the government run it, you've clearly never paid taxes.
An article posted on Free Republic about three weeks ago stated that Toyota claimed they weren't building plants here because Americans are too stupid and uneducated. Toyota stated that they had to train American workers with pictures because they can't read and write. I can see why the hysterical Liberals came up with the nonsense in this article. The NEA is a branch of their party.
Not only have I prepared my own tax forms, I have also prepared bids for government contracts. We have a hodgepodge of government and privately funded health care, each with its own rules and forms. Imagine preparing tax forms by 700 (rounded off number of insurance plans in Seattle), if you're a doctor wanting to get paid. A 140 billion in savings is estimated by simply adopting a universal insurance form.
If you can convince me that having an insurance company clerk micro-manage my health care and charging me an arm and a leg to do it, is a more efficient use of my money, than I will abandon my support for universal health care coverage.
From "Reason"
Third, health care is a paperwork nightmare for patients, doctors, insurers, and employers. In 1999 The New England Journal of Medicine published a study that found it cost $300 billion annually to administer various health insurance plans. It takes some 3 million clerks and managers to run our health care system; thats nearly four times the number of doctors practicing medicine in the United States. It costs between $8 and $18 to file each insurance claim, and a third of them have to be refiled.
http://www.reason.com/0411/fe.rb.mandatory.shtml
Yes Sir.! Womb to Tomb Baby. Nothing else will do for the left.
An "insurance company clerk" cannot knock down the door to your house, and drag you into the street at gunpoint to insist that you stay with their plan. Government can!
Nope. But an insurance company can raise rates over what was quoted, for an entire small company by 35% because I have a benign stable condition that involves one blood test and $200 a year in medication. The following year they raised it another 25% and I was coincidentally laid off the day before the new rates were to take effect.
Has any first world government ever insisted at gun point that a citizen stay with government health care?
Sure. Many socialist countries have laws that prevent anyone from obtaining healthcare outside the government system. Canada is one. How does any government enforce it's laws other than at gunpoint?
Canada's Supreme Court struck down the ban - no guns involved.
If Americans are forbidden to buy drugs from Canada, is that also at the point of a gun?
YES! Can we agree that LESS government is better!
I wish it was a simple as answering yes or no to that question. History teaches that when government is weak, elements spring up within the culture to take advantage of the void. For instance, I wouldn't want to live where drug lords vie for dominance and government is too weak either from corruption or poverty to keep order.
We like government when it is strong enough to protect our property and person and resent it when it requires something from us and tells us what to do.
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