The Best Corporate Health Plan

[pberq]

This article from last month hits the nail on the head.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050630/the_best_corporate_health_plan.php

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The imploding health care system is finally making one thing crystal clear: Corporate America is shredding its own global competitiveness because it can’t shake the death grip of an anti-government ideology. This short-sighted ideology leads big business to shun single-payer national health insurance, which could save businesses hundreds of billions of dollars.

The simple fact is that private-sector insurance has failed. According to the 30-member-country Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, in 2003, “the United States spent $5,635 per person on health, more than twice the OECD average and around ten times more than the lowest-spending countries, Mexico and Turkey.” According to the National Coalition on Health Care, “Health insurance premiums will rise to an average of more than $14,500 for family coverage in 2006.” The United States devotes 15 percent of its gross domestic product to health spending.

Because health care expenditures come either out of business profits or get passed on to consumers as higher prices, U.S. companies put themselves at a competitive disadvantage compared, at least, to every other country in the industrialized world. And that doesn’t even touch the issue of China. Though the China competitive issue is bigger than health care, The New York Times reported this week that a Chinese auto worker earns $1.50 an hour in wages and benefits, compared to $55 an hour at General Motors. . .

[SHRED]

1. Excellent article

Excellent angle.

:toast: