Rx for America: a national health plan
Fewer workers each year receive health insurance from their employers
By Ron Gettelfinger
Special to The Detroit News
Friday, November 4, 2005
In recent weeks, members and retirees of our union have confronted a new set of challenges in the field of health care.
The roots of this problem, however, are hardly new. As Walter Reuther said during an address to the American Public Health Association in 1968:
“We must first free ourselves of the illusion that we really have a health care system in America. What we have is a disorganized, disjointed, antiquated, obsolete non-system of health care. Consumers are being required to subsidize a non-system that fails to deal with their basic health care needs and the cost of that system is continuing to skyrocket.”
Unfortunately, the problems have only become more serious in the intervening years. We now have nearly 46 million Americans — including more than 8 million children — with no health insurance at all.
Current system is wasteful
The U.S. has the best doctors, nurses and health care professionals anywhere in the world. But they are hindered by an ineffective, wasteful bureaucratic system. Our nation spends approximately $1.7 trillion, or 15.4 percent of our gross domestic product, on health care. Four hundred billion of this sum is absorbed by the cost of paperwork and administration.
Additionally, prescription drugs cost more in the United States than in any other country. One reason for these high costs is that pharmaceutical companies spend more than any other industry on lobbying, with more than 1,200 lobbyists in Washington. These lobbyists are doing well for their employers, crafting laws and regulations to protect an industry which earns tens of billions in profits each year. But what are they accomplishing for the rest of us?
For all our health care spending, the United States ranks near the bottom among industrialized countries on life expectancy, infant mortality and virtually every other measure. In fact, the infant mortality rate in our nation’s capital is more than double the infant mortality rate in Beijing.
America deserves better.
Fewer workers covered
Our health care is based on employment, but each year, fewer employers are providing company sponsored insurance. The figure is now down to 60 percent, a decline from 69 percent in 2000. Members of our union have learned through hard experience that relying on individual employers to provide health care is inefficient and a drag on our ability to compete in the global economy.
At General Motors, for example, we recently negotiated an agreement intended to preserve the company’s ability to provide affordable health care for workers and retirees for many years to come. During this process, we had to confront GM’s staggering $61 billion liability for the cost of present and future UAW retiree health care.
Foreign firms have advantage
Global auto companies like Toyota, Honda and Volkswagen have little or no liability for retiree health care because in industrialized nations outside the United States, health insurance is a government responsibility.
With universal health insurance, no employer gains an advantage by offering lower benefits or passing higher costs onto workers. Does it make any sense for the United States to continue on a policy course — employer-based health care — which delivers inferior care to our citizens and gives foreign manufacturers a cost advantage worth tens of billions of dollars over U.S. companies that employ U.S. workers?
To be sure, no government policy will help a company that can’t make products consumers want to buy. But a modern, competitive national health insurance system would go a long way toward helping U.S. manufacturers make products at affordable prices. We need a uniquely American system, not one that tries to copy a solution from a different country. A workable American plan would be universal, covering every single man, woman and child in the United States. It would be comprehensive, offering a range of medical benefits for workers and families. And it would have only a single payer, creating the leverage needed to negotiate the cost of medical care and keep prices from rising every year.
We’ve heard time and again that national health insurance might be a good idea, but it’s not politically possible in the United States at the present time. One thing is for sure: it’s not possible to ignore our current health care crisis any longer. American workers — and American employers — can’t afford it.
http://www.detnews.com/2005/editorial/0511/04/A15-371331.htm
Ron Gettelfinger is president of the United Auto Workers union.