Would single payer HC have saved GM from bankruptcy?

[rurallib]

This is a question that continues to go through my mind. I tend to think it would have, but then GM and Chrysler put out some bad products over a long period of time.

[BlooInBloo]

1. I don't know, but good management sure would have.

[cliffordu]

4. Yep - it's all about the management and NOT the workers, or the fucking

stenographers for that matter.

Ok, maybe the cafeteria workers had something to do with it, but in all fairness they DID serve meatloaf two days a week....

Big business doesn't have a clue as to how much single payer could save...I'd bet it's epic money.

[madmom]

13. Nope, can't go there either. I worked in a GM cafeteria, I was NOT a GM employee.

[cliffordu]

14. YOU!!! IT was YOUR meatloaf that did in the Hummer!!!!!

(I was kidding about the cafeteria workers....)

:hi:

[madmom]

34. Well, from the rumors I heard, there were still quite a lot of

hummers there. But some how I don't think we're talking about the same thing.;-)

[cliffordu]

35. Well....

:rofl:

Maybe not....

On the other hand I've had meatloaf ruin all sorts of hobbies.....

:bounce:

[madmom]

37. LOL, but, if it's a good meatloaf.... the

results are limited only by the constraints of your imagination.:evilgrin:

[cliffordu]

38. And ketchup. Don't forget to stock up on ketchup.....

[madmom]

39. Oh for sure, but it's got to be the spicy kind ; )

[notadmblnd]

19. Canteen or Aramark?

my mom worked in a GM cafeteria too, at Truck and Bus. She worked for Canteen and met her 4th husband there. yeah, she's been married 4 times. She's been widowed twice.

Now when I worked in the GM building in Detroit, the only eatery they sponsored there was the GM Heart Smart cafe. Everything else in the building(s) was privately owned.

[madmom]

33. The one I worked for was privately owned, they did away with Caneen just

before I went to work there. That way they didn't have to pay us as much.:(

[KittyWampus]

7. yes, I think a lack of leadership from both GM corporate and US govt. is what happened.

[Stinky The Clown]

2. I don't know, but it sure would not have hurt it.

[dkf]

3. Probably

They paid over $100 billion in health care costs over the last 15 years or so.

[JHB]

25. And if they hadn't, what would the Mangement have done with the money?

I don't have a lot of faith they would have chosen "plan ahead and invest wisely".

I suspect "siphon it off as executive compensation and stockholder dividends" would be a more likely case, so it's not as if they would have had that money sitting around as a reerve fund.

[phantom power]

5. I can say this: GM liked to blame health care costs as part of its problems...

I doubt they were making those noises out of any sense of social interest. They were mostly bringing it up as part of their anti-union strategies. If they had actually used any of their considerable lobbying power to support Single Payer, they would have benefited financially *and* shown that they actually gave a damn about their employees.

Of course, they did neither, which gets back to the how shitty their management is. Or was.

[CTyankee]

6. I just got off the phone with my financial advisor.

We talked about how American car companies couldn't compete with other countries car companies because of the high cost of health care benefits for their employees.

But we also have to factor in GM's disastrous choice to go more to building SUV's and trucks right before gas prices started skyrocketing.

[notadmblnd]

22. SUVs became quite popular in the mid 90's

that would have been way before gas prices started sky rocketing. I remember because when I was buying a new car, I told the dealer that I thought it was just a fad and that GM was making a mistake and would hurt them in the future. I wonder if the sales person ever thinks about the conversation we had back then?

[Kalyke]

29. It's disastrous to sell people what they wanted to buy?

Or, rather, what they still want to buy.

The Ford F-Series outsells Toyota's "insert teeny, but expensive car here" every month.

People want to buy trucks. They did want to buy SUVs (and still do to some extent or Honda wouldn't be touting it's SUV that gets a whopping 23 mpg :eyes: ), but they still want trucks.

That said, I agree with your adviser about the high cost of health care and it's damaging effects on American manufacturing - not just cars.

[napi21]

8. Unfortunately I don't think so. For some reason, GM's mgmt. was

incompetent, greedy & lazy all at the same time. The execs all believed THEY were worth millions a year, and THEY knew better than those stupid common people about what kind of cars they wanted. Many people weren't willing to dive into the deepest parts of debt just to buy a new car, and with wages stagnating for years and gas prices rising, millions were turning to the cheaper imports. GM ignored the import attractions and failed or refused to concentrate on anything mu their trucks & SUV's. It still baffels me that the President of GM announced over a year ago that they were going to have a small, fuel efficient car built in China because they couldn't make it here & still make a profit! THAT's INSANE!

[Captain Hilts]

9. Yes. Healthcosts for retired employees before eligible for govt. healthcare is a huge burden.

And it's why they built a lot of cars in Canada.

Oldsmobiles are made in Quebec and Fords in Ontario.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

10. It would have slowed the bleeding

Universal healthcare is the rising tide that raises all boats, however GM earned its failure with decades of terrible products and an inability to connect with consumers during the stage of life when they are forming their brand loyalties.

Have you EVER met a kid who said they want their first car to be an Aveo?

[Iwillnevergiveup]

11. K&R

Employer paid health insurance has just got to be a thing of the past.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

12. No.

A sane business plan might have, though. This has only been known for thirty years, so it qualifies as "new information" in GM's world.

[MindPilot]

15. Probably not. GM's problems began decades ago...

when upper management decided that moving money around in then-newly deregulated financial markets was more important than building cars.

Ford operates under the same or very similar UAW contracts and they are not bankrupt. Fact is GM failed to properly project and plan for their legacy costs because, again, they wanted to be bankers instead of automakers and now they have failed at both.

[LeftinOH]

16. Not remaining complacent, not 'resting on their laurels' might have helped

Five (or was it six) Hummer models on the market? A Cadillac pick-up truck? What is GM's chief competitor against the Corolla and Civic: The Cobalt/Cavalier/Sunfire/Sunbird/Saturn/Ion..? The output of vehicle types suggests an unfocused management style -too many directions all at once, and a growth strategy based on the philosophy of "this is the way we've always done things, and we're GM -the largest car company in the world!"

[Winterblues]

17. Considering the very EXTREME burden that Health Care puts on business

I would have to say that it is a no brainer...How can we compete with companies like Honda or BMW when their governments assume that EXTREME burden and those companies are free of that burden. Their employees are then allowed to make more money and companies are allowed to put the excess money into R&D. So Yes Yes Yes having to provide Health Care cost GM it's very existence.

[Captain Hilts]

18. It's weird how unions - not the healthcare industry - get blamed for sky-rocketing healthcare costs

for employees and retirees.

[ScreamingMeemie]

20. Union workers have steadily been making concessions in the way of

health care costs, income and bennies for 5 years running now, so you're answer is no.

[notadmblnd]

21. I had thought the union was scheduled to take over retiree and survivors

health benefits sometime in the near future, so we'll never know if GM getting health care out of the way would have saved them. :shrug:

[Vinca]

23. If there had been single payer over the last 20 or 30 years it would have made

a difference. My dad was a GM retiree and given his health, it must have cost GM a fortune to keep him insured. I couldn't believe how GM took care of him after his retirement. They even provided an attorney to administer his estate after he died. No wonder they went belly up.

[notadmblnd]

27. UAW provides the legal service, not GM

That was a union benefit your dad's dues paid for while he was working, not GM.

[Blue_Tires]

24. either way it would have helped

it's not without purpose that GM built all those plants in Canada...

about a decade ago when the healthcare/pension spike was on the horizon, there was some talk about how strong and forceful an advocate Detroit could have been in lobbying congress for single payer HC, given their immense workforce and importance to the economy...sadly, the powers that be in Detroit then (and many are still around now)...put ALL of their political leverage on fighting fuel mileage standards...

[Kalyke]

26. Yes. n/t

[scheming daemons]

28. No.... making a better product would have saved them....

Ford managed to avoid it.... with the same economic environment.

[Kalyke]

30. While I'm a huge supporter of Ford and drive them, I

have to disagree here.

Ford is surviving because of diversification in foreign markets where employees are covered by single-payer and/or nationalized health care. Ford's American divisions are still struggling or are moving here to the Southern US where the unions have no power (I support UAW, too, and am a Southerner, but I realize I live in a right to be fired, I mean, right-to-work state).

There's nothing wrong with the vast majority of GM products, but their CEOs were greedy, their stockholders were greedy and their business practices couldn't compete on an uneven playing field (Japanese and German healthcare v. our lousy system).

[kjackson227]

31. Healthcare was one big part of the problem, but not THE problem...

there were other reasons also, including shoddy workmanship, and gas guzzlers.

[backscatter712]

32. It would have helped.

I don't know if it would have pushed them back into solvency, but health care was a huge expense for GM. IIRC, they did choose to locate some new factories in Canada instead of the U.S. in order to lower expenses - the increased taxes that funded Canada's universal health care were less than paying for enough health insurance to get proper health care for American workers.

[Badgerman]

36. Short answer: NO! They would have squandered any savings that derived from it. GM wasted itself! n/

[Iwillnevergiveup]

40. Kick

:kick: