Are you veering OT because the power went out on the drive-by-wire steering?

Sorry - I couldn't resist. <8^)

Mike

"Sparky Spartacus" <Sparky@universalexports.org> wrote
E

Spot on.

Health services are not a true free market, because the
consumer weighs in not at all on the pricing of the product.

OTOH, plop your typical middle class employee and his/her
family down somewhere in Canada for a couple of years of
experiencing their health care system, and s/he'll come away
saying s/he doesn't want universal health care, because
Canada won't give him/her and his/her family every
conceivable snake oil product offered for a malady. The
person will not believe s/he's getting the best care in
Canada. "More is better" is a way of life in the U.S.

A cultural shift in attitude will be necessary, IMO. It will
take a generation or two.

I don't know the term, but a former neighbor who was president of the local
hospital at the time explained it pretty much that way, and it made a lot of
sense. He said health care at any particular standard costs a certain amount
to deliver. First in line is the gov't, which says you will deliver for the
amount we pay you or you won't do business at all. Next in line are the
large insurance carriers, like Blue Cross, which say you will deliver for
what we pay or you will be left in the cold. The remainder of the cost is
spread among the self-payers at many times the fair price, because the
others just won't pay. A while ago I had to appeal an emergency room visit
that had been denied... my cost was to be $1300 and BCBS eventually picked
it up for $300. That left the $1000 shortfall to end up on somebody else's
bill.

Mike

snip

CEOs who lead

<this is an auto

debate the

Today's NY Times editorial page has fascinating commentary
related to the above discussion as follows:

"Big Labor's Big Secret" (NY Times, Dec. 28, 2005)

As most Americans are aware, our auto industry is in a
crisis.

Workers' wages are falling, and hundreds of thousands of
jobs are being sent offshore. ...

How did we get here? There are many causes: poor car
designs, high pension costs, increased foreign competition.
But much of it comes down to the overwhelming health
insurance costs borne by the auto makers. This is why the
union's president, Ron Gettelfinger, has urged Congress to
enact sweeping health insurance reforms.

If the government paid everyone's health insurance bills, as
those in Canada and most of Europe do, Detroit's Big Three
could save at least $1,300 per vehicle. Profitability would
return. With deeper pockets, the auto makers could afford to
pay their suppliers. Communities would be spared layoffs.
...

Most advocates of universal health care focus on the
opposition of Republicans and insurance companies. But
perhaps the most important factor keeping an overhaul off
the national agenda is one that few Democrats acknowledge:
most of Mr. Gettelfinger's fellow labor leaders don't
support a single-payer system either.

The reason comes down to simple self-interest. The United
Auto Workers is one of the few private-sector unions that
doesn't run its own health plan. Rather, most have created
huge companies to administer their workers' plans, giving
them a large and often corrupt stake in the current system.

Opposition to a national health care plan is as much a part
of the American trade union tradition as the picket line. It
goes back to Samuel Gompers, the founder of the American
Federation of Labor, who railed at early Congressional
efforts to pass a law mandating employer coverage as Britain
had done, which he said had "taken much of the virility out
of the British unions."

This line of thinking led to the notorious decision in 1991
by the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s health care committee to reject a
proposal that the federation support a single-payer plan.
The majority said a national system simply had no chance in
Congress, but others saw a conflict of interest:
government-supplied health care would put union-run plans
out of business.

The deciding vote was cast by Robert Georgine, chief
executive of Ullico, a huge insurance provider created by
the unions. A decade later, Mr. Georgine, who was paid $3
million a year by Ullico, and several other company
directors - all heads of major A.F.L.-C.I.O. unions - were
investigated by a federal panel for insider trading
involving Ullico stock. Mr. Georgine and several directors
resigned, and this year he agreed to pay back $13 million to
the company.

Let's face it: union-administered health insurance funds
provide irresistible opportunities for labor leaders. First
there's patronage: hiring friends and relatives. Then there
are the conventions, junkets and retreats provided by the
plans and the providers. And for those willing to cross the
line of legality, there's the chance to take kickbacks from
health care vendors.

Many officials are charged, but few go to prison, even when
money allegedly winds up in Mafia hands. Last month federal
prosecutors lost a criminal case in Brooklyn in which they
charged that the Genovese crime family leaned on two
International Longshoremen's Association local presidents
to, among other things, choose a favored health vendor.

Evidently, the jury was convinced by the defense's argument
that the union leaders were under duress. Even Lawrence
Ricci, the principal accused Genovese figure, was acquitted,
although he disappeared during the trial and never
testified. (His body was found last month in the trunk of a
car in Union, N.J.)

Despite shrinking membership, organized labor still has
enough money and muscle to get behind a campaign for
national health insurance. Last month, public-sector unions
in California came up with tens of millions of dollars in a
successful campaign to defeat a ballot measure that
challenged their right to use union dues for political
purposes.

The problem is getting American unions to fight for common
concerns as opposed to narrow institutional interests. It
may just be that a broad-scale union overhaul will have to
precede one in American health care.

----

By Robert Fitch, author of the forthcoming "Solidarity for
Sale: How Corruption Destroyed the Labor Movement and
Undermined America's Promise."

So the UAW (the auto industry union) has no ties to health
insurance; its industry is being devastated by health costs;
and so the UAW is for a national health plan, which is
consistent with the whole (let's face it, socialist or at
least social-democrat) notion of unions.

(But what ties to health insurance profits do auto companies
have? Would it pay for the CEOs of auto companies to lobby
for a national health plan?)

Unions in other industries have ties to health insurance;
are in industries not /as/ devastated (knock on wood) by
health costs; and so oppose a national health plan, which is
antithetical to the notion of unions. And, apparently, they
have opposed such a plan as a matter of historical record.

The temp gauge should be pointing to about 2 o'clock (according to the
manual) but is actually down to about 4 o'clock.  obviously the idea that
the car is running too cold is ridiculous (unless Santa has taken up
residence under the hood and is making it snow).

so what's up with the gauge saying she's cold?  just a bad gauge?

mdr