To:

Zcom_simple
Home » Z Blogs » Roger Bybee's Blog » Auto firms ignored health crisis

Hello,

Blogs are a familiar feature on the internet - where users post content in an accumulating manner, with comments, and search options, etc. They facilitate expression and exploration, and via attached comments, also debate and synthesis.


Reading and
Navigating Blogs

Our blogs are quite powerful. Each writer can post, as is typically the case. Sustainers who have the option can also post, however. All Blogs appear in the blog system, and sometimes also in content boxes the top page of ZNet - and always via the left menu of the top page - and can be found via searches, etc.

Commenting on blogs follows the blogs, attached at the bottom, and blog comments, like all others, are also visible in many places that show comments including in the forum system. In addition, the entire blog system gathers content for everyone - but one can look at the accumulating content in many ways.

  • For example one can look at one writer's efforts - so one is seeing what is effectively a blog system for that one writer, or Sustainer.
  • One can also look at the content by topic, seeing blogs that are tagged as being about a certain topic - or place, as well. Thus, when doing that, it is a blog system about a topic, or a place, with many contributors.
  • One can look at only writer blogs, or only sustainer blogs, as well.
  • One can look at blogs for particular Groups, too.

All this is easily done using the left menu. Searches allow even more variables and refinements.


Creating Blog Posts

If you are a Sustainer with permission, and are logged in, you will see a link in the left menu for you to post a blog - and you can use that to post one, and then tag it various ways (such as with a topic or place, or a group tag), and once you do, it is in the system with you as the author.

You can also use the console button to the left to post a blog - anytime and from anywhere in the site, as long as you are logged in.

Meanwhile, enjoy the blogs - and, by the way, if you are a Free Member or a Sustainer with a ZSpace page, of course you can put one or more content boxes on it, pulling blog links of any sort you may want to filter for, for example, by you or by your friends or by others - and by topic, about places, for groups, etc.

Blogs

678691

Roger Bybee's Blog

Web Address: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/rogerdbybee
Bio: I've recently been invited  to write a twice-weekly blog in In These Times, appearing Tuesdays and Thursdays (go to www.inthesetimes.com and flick the In These Times Working link at the top of... (More)

All Bybee Blogs

Recent Bybee Content

Znetarticle_icon ZNet Articles
Zmagarticle_icon ZMag Articles
Zblogpost_icon Blog Posts

Auto firms ignored health crisis

By Roger Bybee at Jul 06, 2009

PDF Version

Printer Friendly Version
Change Text Size a- | A+

 

How health costs

fueled US Auto crisis

 

In light of the recent bankruptcies and restructuring of GM and Chrysler, it is useful to recall the prescient words of Uwe Reinhardt, a Princeton University health care economist, who described the Big Three “a social insurance system that sells cars to finance itself.” (NYT 7/15/03).

 

The absence of a single-payer system gave US auto firms a $4 per hour disadvantage relative to Canada, according to calculations by the Canadian Auto Workers.

 

Similarly, former General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner estimated that US health costs represented about $1,400 a vehicle. "Health care put us at a $5 billion disadvantage against Toyota," Wagoner stated. Since the profit on a small car is roughly $1,000, the US automakers have been essentially sacrificing as much as 60% of their potential profit on small cars. (In part that explains their heavy reliance on SUVs, which yielded a profit of as much as $10,000 each.)

 

While GM advocated single-payer health care in the early 1990's under then-CEO Jack Smith, the automakers seemed to lose interest later in the decade as their profits soared as a result of heavy SUV sales. GM even added two pharmaceutical executives to its board of directors, thereby inserting implacable foes of health care reform on its top leadership body. Drug companies fear that single-payer health care will result in negotiated prices for pharmaceuticals, as they do in most nations.  (See Morton Mintz, "Single Payer is Good for Business, Nation, 11/15/04)

 

One of the most pernicious outcomes of the "bailout" agreements is that the UAW's health care programs for retirees are now heavily reliant on GM and Chrysler stock. In the stock price drops, retiree health benefits will be on the chopping block.

Comment On This Blog Post  See All Comments (0)

Loading_border