Manny Lopez is Motown’s head cheerleader. So when the Managing Ed of The Detroit News‘ auto section sits down to pen an opinion piece on the Employee Free Choice Act—the Orwellian federal legislation eliminating secret ballots for unionization—you know you’re in for a good time. As Stevie Ray Vaughan was wont to croon, who do you love? “Michigan’s business environment can’t afford the Employee Free Choice Act.” So that’s it, then. I’m not quite sure how Manny can square his opposition to the legislation with his support for the United Auto Workers. But I’m all ears.
For sure, the UAW helped make workplaces safer and increased wages and benefits. But we have to carefully examine the economic impact this special interest legislation would have on Michigan.
“This could have tremendous consequences for the auto industry,” Paul Kersey, director of labor policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, told me Tuesday. “And the costs could be very substantial.”
Costs. Got it. But what are they?
Kersey says Michigan is particularly at risk because union membership and the payment of dues or “fees” is mandatory, since this is not a right-to-work state.
And given the history of big labor here, there’s likely to be a heavier hand in organizing and pressuring workers at auto suppliers and smaller shops.
Gone is the secret ballot that’s used in every democratic election in America. And then, if a contract can’t be reached, binding arbitration is required. Want to know how serious that can get? Turn back to the 1970s when Detroit lost a case to the police union that resulted in mass layoffs in the city.
That won’t bode well with small businesses. One supplier told me Tuesday he’d have to reconsider staying open if the legislation passed.
Strange that the DetN is happy to perpetuate an exact figure to the cost of not bailing out Chrysler and GM, yet won’t put a number to this fundamentally anti-democratic (small d) bill. Still, I guess you can’t have it both ways, right? Anti-“Employee Free Choice” (a.k.a. card check) AND pro-UAW Big 2.8. Wrong.
With the nation’s highest unemployment rate, an industry that needs government loans to stay afloat and little hope of a turnaround, there’s no justification for scaring away or shutting down auto companies that still exist in this state.
Unions already have the right to organize. It should stay that way.
Welcome to Michigan, Land of the Non Sequitor.
….. given the history of big labor here, there’s likely to be a heavier hand in organizing and pressuring workers…
Manny, do ya reallllly think so???
This Lutz-esque utterance must be considered for the Understatement-of-the-Month quote.
The Employee Free Choice Act does not eliminate secret ballots.
The Terrorists-on-the-Potomac are deliberately driving employment opportunities offshore with their criminal thefts…I don’t know why anyone would hire anyone in the “ignorant brat” society…Huge liability.
What does it tell you when politicians think secret ballot elections are unfair?
Just another payoff to the unions that donated hundreds of millions to the Dem’s political campaigns.
Who would be crazy enough to start an industrial company in the US?
Much better ways to invest your money than in a business in the US or Canada. That is the problem the government now faces. They have shut out and vilified the very people that could jumpstart the economy. The money will go elseware.
Manny says the nice stuff about the UAW because he s terrified of them. They don’t play nice.
I,ve been a union member three times in my life. When I see “union”, I read “organized crime”.
“The Employee Free Choice Act does not eliminate secret ballots.”
Shhhh!
Don’t destroy the narrative!
“The Employee Free Choice Act does not eliminate secret ballots.”
Shhhh!
Don’t destroy the narrative!
Yeah, why let actual details of the bill get in the way of rightwing/libertarian talking points?
“The Employee Free Choice Act does not eliminate secret ballots.”
ORLY?
From the AFLCIO’s information page on the Employee Free Choice Act:
“Do so-called secret ballot elections allow employees a free and fair opportunity to make their own decisions about unions?
No. By the time employees get to vote, the environment has been so poisoned that free and fair choice isn’t an option.”
“Majority sign-up is democratic. Under majority sign-up, a union is formed only if a majority of all employees signs written authorization forms. Employees vote to have the union represent them by signing the forms. Any employee who does not sign a written authorization form is presumed not to support union representation.”
I wonder how “poisoned” the environment could become once union officials have you down as not wanting them to represent you…
http://www.aflcio.org/joinaunion/voiceatwork/efca/majoritysignup.cfm
The workers can still choose to have a secret ballot election even after the act passes if they request one.
It is simply in the hands of, you know, the actual workers rather than Wal-Mart over what kind of election they have.
And the pro-union workers and organizers would never intimidate and threaten those workers who dared to request an election with a secret ballot.
I see that Fantasy Land isn’t just a small theme park outside of Lancaster, Pa. It also appears to be the home of many union supporters…
“And the pro-union workers and organizers would never intimidate and threaten those workers who dared to request an election with a secret ballot.”
And of course Wal-Mart never does anything like fly down corporate thugs to cow workers into not unionizing when they dare request it.
Oh, wait…
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4182/is_20000411/ai_n10136326
Yes, if you think Unions have more power than corporations to intimidate workers in this country you do live in fantasy land.
Further from http://freechoiceact.org/petition/pages/the_real_secret/
“Opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act who claim it eliminates the secret ballot have a big problem. They’re lying. The legislation will not take away the secret ballot, but rather will allow workers, not their bosses, to choose which union organizing method to use.
These are the two methods for organizing that recognized by the National Labor Relations Board, Congress and the Supreme Court:
1. Majority Sign-Up: Under majority sign-up, workers sign valid written forms indicating their preference for a union. The Employee Free Choice Act would change existing law so that an employer must recognize its employees’ union when a majority of its workers has authorized union representation using majority sign-up. Read more about why majority sign-up is needed.
2. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Elections: Under the Employee Free Choice Act, workers are still free to organize using “secret ballot” elections. However, majority sign-up is also needed as an option, because of employer abuses. A shocking 94 percent of employers resist workers’ efforts to form unions, 49 percent illegally threaten to shut down the worksite, 51 percent use bribes or favoritism to coerce workers into opposing a union, and 30 percent illegally fire pro-union workers.”
Which “choice” do you think the union seeking employees will make?
The workers can still choose to have a secret ballot election even after the act passes if they request one.
It is simply in the hands of, you know, the actual workers rather than Wal-Mart over what kind of election they have.
Why should something as precious as privacy in a free society need to “controlled” by anyone?
Wasn’t “who do you love” from George Thorogood? Or Bo Diddley?
BDB :
March 11th, 2009 at 10:48 am
“And the pro-union workers and organizers would never intimidate and threaten those workers who dared to request an election with a secret ballot.”
And of course Wal-Mart never does anything like fly down corporate thugs to cow workers into not unionizing when they dare request it.
…
Yes, if you think Unions have more power than corporations to intimidate workers in this country you do live in fantasy land./i>
Well then change the name to the “Thuggery Equalization Act of 2009” and put it to a vote
BDB: Yes, if you think Unions have more power than corporations to intimidate workers in this country you do live in fantasy land.
Only one problem, BDB…this act won’t change a thing in this scenario. So the story is largely irrelevant to this discussion.
If unions only wanted to increase benefits and pay that would be fine, but they don’t. They want to control how companies operate and create fake, featherbedded jobs.
Unions don’t destroy companies by slightly increasing wages for necessary workers, they destroy companies by standing in the way of unnecessary worker being laid off.
If you want high wages and benefits, fine. But realize that those things will create a huge incentive for companies to replace you with robots and technology.
And that is how we arrive at things like job banks. The luddite unions demand that if someone is replaced with a robot the company needs to pay that person to sit at home.
With that unions destroy the incentive to innovate and increase productivity, destroying society’s ability to move forward.
Unions helped create the middle class by allowing the ambitious children of union workers to go to college, but they have also enabled the entrenchment of the uneducated working class by allowing the less ambitious children of union workers to say “fuck school, I can work on the line and do better.”
National health insurance (insurance – not health care – your dad/grandpa calls it Medicare) would go much further to help both employers and employees than card check. Unfortunately small businesses struggling to provide health care, and independent entrepreneurs struggling to afford healthcare (i.e. Robert Farago mentioned he had to sell TTAC to get health care) do not have as strong a lobbying group as the major labor unions.
Reason isn’t right on everything, but they clearly demonstrate in this video that low skill, high pay jobs are not sustainable:
http://reason.tv/video/show/451.html
If cheap foreign labor does not take the jobs then robots will. I would prefer that robots take union workers jobs instead of cheap foreign labor, since that would create high paying tech jobs. But unions don’t want anything getting in the way of high pay for low skills, and that attitude is what destroys companies and progress.
If the DetN is leery about this then the Democrats are in for a bigger fight than expected. They will burn a lot of political capital pushing this through.
These are the two methods for organizing that recognized by the National Labor Relations Board, Congress and the Supreme Court:
1. Majority Sign-Up: Under majority sign-up, workers sign valid written forms indicating their preference for a union. The Employee Free Choice Act would change existing law so that an employer must recognize its employees’ union when a majority of its workers has authorized union representation using majority sign-up. Read more about why majority sign-up is needed.
2. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Elections: Under the Employee Free Choice Act, workers are still free to organize using “secret ballot” elections. However, majority sign-up is also needed as an option, because of employer abuses. A shocking 94 percent of employers resist workers’ efforts to form unions, 49 percent illegally threaten to shut down the worksite, 51 percent use bribes or favoritism to coerce workers into opposing a union, and 30 percent illegally fire pro-union workers.”
Which “choice” do you think the union seeking employees will make?
Well, in the (unimaginable!) scenario that the union does not get a majority to sign up, then they conveniently created a list of pro-union workers. The employer could get that list and know exactly who to fire to prevent the next union drive. That possibility increases the pressure on the pro-union workers to influence their coworkers to “choose” to sign up for the union.
The Employee Free Choice Act only intensifies any adversarial relationships between employers and unions, with employees caught in the crossfire.
Union coercion is an old wives’ tale.
That being said, there is one massive competitive advantage foreign companies have over their American counterparts: they don’t have to pay for health insurance. If we could simply institute a national health service, that would single handily make Americans that much more competitive. As health insurance rates continue to increase at a geometric rate, this problem is only going to get worse.
What AG said.
If the economic non recovery act allowed a single worker to force a secret ballot, there would be a lot less hooplah. As I understand it, a union thug will visit me in private and ask me to sign the card. Once I do that, he has my vote.
What exactly do the owners or managers do to threaten the workers not to unionize? I here all the labor folks make all sorts of insinuations, but I haven’t seen actual stories to compare. Threatening to close the business isn’t a crime, threatening violence is.
AG,
Healthcare isn’t free anywhere. It gets paid for everywhere. If the employer doesn’t pay it through a benefit, then they pay it through a tax. That tax is either on the employer directly, or on the worker who pays it out of his wage that he gets from the employer.
Every one of those countries then rations care, and every one of their manufacturers pays less in compensation and benefits.
The bottom line is that the compensation and benefits is out of line in the US. That’s not the whole problem, just part of it. However, socialized medicine only saves the employer if the government is stepping in to reduce the healthcare available to the employee. Is that what you really want?
(49% of employers threaten to shut down the work site if unionized) What do you think a strike does? Oh thats different.
@AG
“That being said, there is one massive competitive advantage foreign companies have over their American counterparts: they don’t have to pay for health insurance. If we could simply institute a national health service, that would single handily make Americans that much more competitive. As health insurance rates continue to increase at a geometric rate, this problem is only going to get worse.”
Uh, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Where do you think the health insurance comes from in these foreign countries? Does it just fall from the sky? No, it is paid for through higher taxes. Nationalizing health care does not make it free. Six of one, half dozen the other.
Edit: I see Landcrusher beat me to the same point.
I’ve attempted to read both sides of the “Employee Free Choice Act” and it appears that the main justification for eliminating the secret ballot is employers can drag their feet in scheduling an election under current law. If that is the problem, then make it harder to delay the election but preserve the ability of the employer to demand a secret ballot. The “Employee Free Choice Act” appears to be a transparent power grab by unions to bypass elections that they might lose and substitute a process ready made for worker intimidation by union organizers.
Made in USA by Robots
http://despair.com/madeinamerica.html
Those higher taxes sure killed off the auto industry of Japan, South Korea, and Germany. Their life expectancies and infant mortality rates are lower than ours, and they even spend a greater percentage of their GDP on healthcare!
Rationing? We don’t have that at all. No, sir, not in the USA. No private insurance company ever denies care. Not at all. Whats more, everyone here is insured.
In case you don’t know it already, everything I said above is the complete opposite of reality.
AG
You said ‘Union coercion is an old wives’ tale.’ I am non-union, and have worked in three different shops that had union in other departments (I am in IT). I have been threatened repeatedly for voting against unionization. How did they know I voted no? Because we all did. So they threatened all of us and harassed us no end. I had operators take my printouts right off the printer and put them through the paper shredder. Tapes I needed to finish installs were damaged or just disappeared. We were all threatened with physical violence. Cars were vandalized. One guy was so threatened he had to call the cops. He eventually quit. This went on for over a year before the union accepted that we were never going to join the union, and more importantly never going to give them dues. This is not a wives tale.
BDB, what is your point? I don’t have a problem with nationalized health care, but it’s not a panacea to cure the problems of the auto industry, or any other manufacturing industry in the US. The fact is, the costs of health care have to be paid for regardless of what type of system you choose, be it privatized or nationalized, or how you institute it, by having the employer pay direct benefits, pay more taxes to the government, have the employees pay directly from their salary, etc.. The costs of health care are a pie, the whole is not going to change no matter how you slice it up.
DrX–
My point is countries with nationalized healthcare spend less with better outcomes.
I didn’t say anything about it being a panacea, but it sure wouldn’t hurt.
I wholeheartedly agree that healthcare in the US needs vast reform and needs to be less costly with better care. This would benefit everyone: industry; employees; we all win. That being said, it’s difficult for me to envision how that would be accomplished by handing it over to the United States government. I guess it depends on your view of the government. When I think US government, I don’t think “efficient” or “cost effective”, quite the opposite.
DrX, all we have is data from other countries where health care is run by the government. They spend less money as a percentage of GDP on health care, and they have better outcomes, and there’s no such thing as being “uninsured” there.
About 3% of the money that goes through Medicare goes to overhead; for private insurers it is much higher, usually 15-25%. Medicare is much more “efficient” and “cost effective”.
If you think we have a purely, or even majority private health care industry you are deeply misinformed; we simply have a corrupt, profiteering health care industry. 60% of US health care costs are already financed by the US government. Yet tens of millions are uninsured, and small companies cannot finance health care programs because their employee pools are too small.
The US system does horribly moronic things like denying preventative care and then getting stuck with the bill for the emergency room visits that result from that lack of preventative care.
The governments in countries like Norway and Sweeden insure their entire populations for what the US government alone spends per capita on health care to only insure a fraction of the population.
Here are some responses to the myths:
—————
“Is national health insurance ‘socialized medicine’?
No. Socialized medicine is a system in which doctors and hospitals work for and draw salaries from the government. Doctors in the Veterans Administration and the Armed Services are paid this way. The health systems in Great Britain and Spain are other examples. But in most European countries, Canada, Australia and Japan they have socialized health insurance, not socialized medicine. The government pays for care that is delivered in the private (mostly not-for-profit) sector. This is similar to how Medicare works in this country. Doctors are in private practice and are paid on a fee-for-service basis from government funds. The government does not own or manage medical practices or hospitals.
The term socialized medicine is often used to conjure up images of government bureaucratic interference in medical care. That does not describe what happens in countries with national health insurance where doctors and patients often have more clinical freedom than in the U.S., where bureaucrats attempt to direct care.”
—————
“Won’t competition be impeded by a universal health care system?
Advocates of the ‘free market’ approach to health care claim that competition will streamline the costs of health care and make it more efficient. What is overlooked is that past competitive activities in health care under a free market system have been wasteful and expensive, and are the major cause of rising costs.
There are two main areas where competition exists in health care: among the providers and among the payers. When, for example, hospitals compete they often duplicate expensive equipment in order to corner more of the market for lucrative procedure-oriented care. This drives up overall medical costs to pay for the equipment and encourages overtreatment. They also waste money on advertising and marketing. The preferred scenario has hospitals coordinating services and cooperating to meet the needs of their communities.
Competition among insurers (the payers) is not effective in containing costs either. Rather, it results in competitive practices such as avoiding the sick, cherry-picking, denial of payment for expensive procedures, etc. An insurance firm that engages in these practices may reduce its own outlays, but at the expense of other payers and patients.”
Source: http://www.pnhp.org/facts/singlepayer_faq.php
Plus, technically, we already have universal health care. Just not universal health insurance.
Ex., instead of going to a doctor to ask about that pain in his said, John Doe decides to tough out since he’s uninsured and can’t afford the out-of-pocket costs.
It turns out that pain in his side was an appendix infection. His appendix collapses, and he’s forced to go to the emergency room where he by law cannot be denied car. Taxpayers pick up the tab, and his health care has just became ten times more expensive than it would be under a system of universal insurance where he could have visited a general practice doctor and have his infection treated with a simple antibiotic when it was in it’s early stages.
Lest I be crucified here, I should point out that I’m in favor of nationalized health care. Our current system is obviously very poor. I’m just skeptical that a nationalized health care system will turn out to be as wonderful as the ardent supporters seem to think. Much is made of the fact that less is spent on healthcare in countries with nationalized systems and people are generally more healthy. However, it’s important to remember that correlation does not equal cause and effect. If you take a trip to Europe, you’ll notice that fewer people are overweight. Is that because they have nationalized healthcare, or is it due to other underlying causes, such as differences in culture and lifestyle? I do agree that lack of appropriate preventative care is a significant factor in the high cost of health care here in the US.
Where the US government already has the whip hand, their record has been less than adequate. The Feds rule Social Security and Medicare. With no justification, they have linked the two together. I’d guess they are doing so to force a cap on retiree medical spending, whether or not the retirees have the wherewithal, because, of course they know what’s best for us all.
Use Medicare or Else
I do agree that our healthcare system is a mess. I just don’t see the US government fixing it.
BDB,
Let’s say those countries are more efficient with healthcare spending by x% and also that they do not ration. That way we don’t have to have the debate about the facts that never ends. I was personally a victim of healthcare rationing in Canada, and let me tell you, my wife was simultaneously trying to offer any amount of money and trying to figure out how to get me out of the country in order to save my life which was threatened by lack of available doctors, unwillingness to do expensive tests, and ridiculous bureaucracy. The doctors all admitted this after I was saved, which they could do because they were under no threat of lawsuit. BTW, I believe that if you norm out other factors, the socialized medecine countries look the same or worse, but let’s agree to disagree on that as well.
Okay, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH. Under our present tax scheme, not only would the money for the GM workers healthcare have to come from GM and it’s employees through taxation (doesn’t matter which, they are all the same pie for this), but now they have to pick up a portion of those uninsured people who you aren’t working and who you believe don’t get healthcare now. You think we will suddenly get MORE healthcare services for less money because the government took over?
Where do you think the savings will come from? Who are you going to cut out? Why don’t we just cut them out now, and skip socialization?
BDB,
Just another thing. The current consensus is that preventative healthcare savings don’t ever materialize. Yes, your anecdote SEEMS to save money, but in reality, it does not. The money saved on John Dough gets spent by Jane and Mary Joe for unneeded preventative care, and lots of other things like defensive medicine, malpractice, bureaucracy, etc.
no slushbox,
Never use Norway and Sweden, it’s like comparing professionally bred dogs to feral cats. While you are at it, you might as well advocate using motorcycles to improve passenger safety after purging the data of single vehicle accidents because they are too hideous to talk about.
In a study between British and American health outcomes, in which race and socioeconomic status were controlled for (the subjects were all white, Middle class, and middle aged), the British subjects in the study had better health outcomes than Americans.
This despite the fact the British spend less on health care than Americans, and despite the fact the British and American diets are similar.
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/reprint/295/17/2037
(PDF warning)
Keep in mind this is the NHS, probably the worst example of government provided health care. The French and Swiss systems would probably fare even better–they have a basic level of socialized care with the option of gold-plated private health care if you feel like paying for it. That’s what I would favor for the U.S.
DrX:
I completely agree that national health insurance will not be perfect. I just hate to see it attacked on efficiency grounds.
The private insurance industry is massively inefficient.
Also, the “socialist” rhetoric gets a bit old. Yes national health insurance with put an end to the parasite on our economy known as private health insurance. But it would also provide a giant boost to small business and entrepreneurs.
For all of the complaining about taxes hurting small business, taxes are something you only have to pay after you make a profit.
Employee health care, on the other hand, puts small businesses, with their small labor pools, at an expensive disadvantage from day one.
Landcrusher:
Do you have any solid refutations of the points I’ve made above regarding national health insurance, or just obscure analogies without any logical connection?
Given your experience in Canada I can understand your skepticism, but Canada isn’t the US either.
If you had an example of someone almost dying because of their horrible treatment under Medicare then that would be valid. That is the program that would most logically be expanded to cover all ages in the US.
National health insurance greatly reduces the bureaucracy and overhead of private health insurance, and it also reduces the need for malpractice suits since much (half according this this site) of the compensation from malpractice suits simply goes to future care, which will be covered with national health insurance.
And do you have any sources regarding the long term effect of preventative care on costs?
The conservative straw man, the person sitting on his or her ass at home not working, is covered by Medicaid, or simply hits up emergency rooms. National health insurance would simply cover, without the games, denial of coverage, profiteering and lack of effective competition that exists with private insurance, people that work for a living.
BDB – what you want and what your betters have planned for you may be two different things. How do you square your hopes with the overview of the lawsuit against unreasonable government rules linked above?
re: the JAMA study – any stats on what happens to/for older folks under NHS? A disproportionate percentage of US healthcare spending is on older folks. Which of your parents or grandparents will you decided can do without needed healthcare in later retirement?
Engine Charlie Wilson – Whats good for GM is good for the country. And its good for grannie to knock off. I made that last part up. (Too, Wilson was misquoted and taken out of context – nothing new in the journo biz)
“re: the JAMA study – any stats on what happens to/for older folks under NHS?”
The same thing that happens to them under Medicare here. Except prior to aging they will have many years of preventive care that will hold down the cost they place on the system when they are aged.
google “NHS and the elderly”
the accounts aren’t what you have hoped for
Oh, the old rationing boogeyman rears its head. There is always rationing. Whenever there is a limited resource, there has to be a way to decide who gets what. The current U.S. system rations healthcare by giving the insured all they need while denying reasonable care to the uninsured. The insured elderly suck up vast resources so they can live a few additional months while the uninsured young die early from problems that could have been caught early.
slush,
Obscure analogies without logical connection? That is obscure itself. If I thought what I was saying was obscure and illogical, would I have said it?
I have heard a lot of talk about why you shouldn’t use homogenous societies as comparisons because it’s almost impossible to control for. Britainn would be a much better comparison so it’s better you brought it up. I can of course walk over to the medical center and start interviewing Brits who came here for medical help. They are all over.
You should avoid most other european countries, especially scandinavian ones, due to extensive eugenics programs that lasted more than a single generation. It’s an ugly bit of history, and many official records have been altered to hide it after the fact.
Here is the thing, how much less do the Brits spend? Do they count private spending, and spending here in the states (Houston’s second largest industry is healthcare, and we import patients from all over the world).
Medicare really isn’t as efficient as the studies say it is. First, if we reduced everyone to the medicare rate, many of the doctors would simply quit and I am not making that up, I know plenty of doctors socially. Medicare is skimming off the rest of the payors in many cases, and overpaying in a few. Look at all the stories about private hospitals and how there are moves to outlaw them because they skim only the profitable patients. I knew a nurse whose job it was to ensure that the most effective codes and comments were put on the charts to maximize the medicare pay. She stopped seeing patients, and got a raise to do it. That was a 300 bed hospital for Pete’s sake.
Also, medicare is rationed care already. If you are a medicare patient, a doctor cannot legally provide you with for cash services. IOW, if medicare won’t pay, the doctor has to do it for free. At least mine does.
I don’t want to be on medicare, and expanding it will simply lead to them having to raise the spending while care gets worse.
I won’t support the existing system of private insurance either. It’s almost as bad, if not worse than nationalization. The government has it’s hands all over it, and it’s ugly. If nothing else, the laws protecting the insurer from late pay and interest fees simply raise the rates for everything. However, the worst part is that it’s tied to employment, not portable, and the insured generally has no choice or choices. The people closest to the healthcare decisions are the farthest removed from the monetary transaction and it’s plain stupid.
What needs to be done is to put the cost decisions back into the room with the doctor and the patient. We need a system where the patient is incentivised to keep down costs, the doctors are free to practice, and the insurance guy is beholden to both of them.
I recommend we switch to a broker service where you pay a broker to get you healthcare. He recommends providers, and if you are not happy with them, you blame HIM, and fire him. This means the doctors are trying to keep you and him happy. He is trying to keep both of you happy and the cost down, and really so is the doctor. The reason for the third party is that individual patients have little way to track overall quality and outcome of providers, but the brokers would. Of course, this means scrapping the work connection, which would be good. Government could then subsidize the broker/insurance fee for people we think ought to get that.
Lastly, healthcare is not a right in this country, and it should not be. It cannot be. We need to seperate emergency care from the rest, and go back to charity, debt, or whatever so that people realize that it’s not free and must be budgeted and paid for like anything else.
QWERTY,
Failure to be able to pay is not rationing. Words mean things. Get over it. Also, define adequate. I got to talk to some of the top docs in western Canada. They ALL admit there is rationing, and that it’s really not good for the folks who can’t afford to hop the border. How many years of your life should you give up because your hip replacement or bypass isn’t an emergency?
Under capitalism, it’s up to the individual, not some bureaucrat, to decide who gets what care. If you have never been ground beneath the wheel of state, you simply do not understand. I can tell you that there will be people killed over the kind of rationing that goes on in Canada and the UK if they try it here. It simply will not work, so the money will not be saved.
AG:Union coercion is an old wives’ tale.
Sorry, but no. You’ve obviously never been to Philadelphia.
no_slushbox: About 3% of the money that goes through Medicare goes to overhead; for private insurers it is much higher, usually 15-25%. Medicare is much more “efficient” and “cost effective”.
Medicare serves a limited audience – the elderly – compared to private insurers, who usually cover a broad spectrum of people.
Also note that one reason Medicare is “more efficient” is because the reimbursements to health providers are capped by the government. Most physicians prefer to serve patients with private insurance, versus those covered by Medicare and Medicaid, because the reimbursements are more generous. Unless that steady stream of doctors and hospital officials through my office urging my boss to support higher reimbursement rates under Medicare (and Medicaid) is just a figment of my imagination.
no_slushbox: National health insurance greatly reduces the bureaucracy and overhead of private health insurance, and it also reduces the need for malpractice suits since much (half according this this site) of the compensation from malpractice suits simply goes to future care, which will be covered with national health insurance.
Switching to a single-payer system does not mean that the tort system (which has historically been handled by each invididual state) will also be reformed.
But I wouldn’t expect a group called Physicians for a National Health Program to note that fact, as it basically means their point is worthless. (You might take note that this group is hardly an unbiased source of information.)
There is no guarantee that malpractice costs will fall unless the tort system is also revamped. One reason costs are lower in Great Britain, for example, is because losers in civil cases pay for court costs. The “British rule” has lessened the number of lawsuits, and thus the paranoia about lawsuits from which American medical services suffer. But note that this has NOTHING to do with the adoption of a national health system.
Do you really believe that the American Bar Association will stand by while THAT rule is adopted in all 50 states?
And here is the story of an American living in London who used the British system when his wife suffered a stroke:
Having praised the caregivers, I’m forced to return to the inefficiencies of a health system devoid of incentives. One can tell that the edge has disappeared in treatment in Britain. For example, when we returned to the U.S. we discovered that treatment exists for thwarting the effects of blood clots in the brain if administered shortly after a stroke. Such treatment was never mentioned, even after we were admitted to the neurology hospital. Indeed, the only medication my wife was given for a severe stroke was a daily dose of aspirin. Now, treating stroke victims is tricky business. My wife had a low hemoglobin count, so with all the medications in the world, she still might have been better off with just aspirin. But consultations with doctors never brought up the possibilities of alternative drug therapies. (Of course, U.S. doctors tend to be pill pushers, but that’s a different discussion.)
Then there was the condition of Queen’s Square (an NHS facility) compared with the physical plant of the New York hospitals. As I mentioned, the cleanliness of U.S. hospitals is immediately apparent to all the senses. But Cornell and New York University hospitals (both of which my wife has been using since we returned) have ready access to technical equipment that is either hard to find or nonexistent in Britain. This includes both diagnostic equipment and state-of-the-art equipment used for physical therapy.
We did have one brief encounter with a more comprehensive type of British medical treatment–a day trip to one of the few remaining private hospitals in London.
Before she could travel back home, my wife needed to have the weak wall in her heart fortified with a metal clamp. The procedure is minimally invasive (a catheter is passed up to the heart from a small incision made in the groin), but it requires enormous skill. The cardiologist responsible for the procedure, Seamus Cullen, worked in both the public system and as a private clinician. He informed us that the waiting line to perform the procedure in a public hospital would take days if not weeks, but we could have the procedure done in a private hospital almost immediately. Since we’d already been separated from our 12-year-old daughter for almost a month, we opted to have the procedure done (with enormous assistance from my employer) at a private hospital.
Checking into the private hospital was like going from a rickety Third World hovel into a five-star hotel. There was clean carpeting, more than enough help, a private room (and a private bath!) in which to recover from the procedure, even a choice of wines offered with a wide variety of entrees. As we were feasting on our fancy new digs, Dr. Cullen came by, took my wife’s hand, and quietly told us in detail about the procedure. He actually paused to ask us whether we understood him completely and had any questions. Only one, we both thought to ask: Is this a dream?
I’ll take his word for it, as his wife suffered a major illness (the other accounts I’ve read from Americans who have experienced care under the British system are those who have suffered broken limbs or relatively minor illnesses) and was treated by the British National Health Service.
Will we change our system? More than likely, but please note that the majority of Americans with private insurance who have had to use it are quite satisfied with their coverage – well over 80 percent give it to top ratings.
It’s the same phenomenon that colors Americans’ views of the education system, or Congress. Americans say that they are unhappy with the big, impersonal institution (“health care,” “the education system,” “Congress”) but are actually satisfied with that particular part of the system they contact on a regular basis (their insurance plan, their local school district, their Congressman or Congresswoman).
I also find it amusing that private insurance is demonized, when virtually every country with nationalized care also permits citizens to subsidize their government-provided care with private insurance. And virtually everyone who can afford to do so takes advantage of that option. In Canada, residents of Quebec SUED for the right to purchase private insurance (the Canadian national health plan had forbidden this), and won.
Indeed, if nationalized care is so efficient and superior to private health care, then why has the UAW never permitted the car companies to shift retirees completely to Medicare? Health care for retirees is a big expense for GM, Ford and Chrysler. Shifting retirees to Medicare would result in huge cost savings for these companies. The UAW wouldn’t hear of it. Why? Because the level of coverage provided by the private plan enjoyed by UAW members is far more generous than that provided by Medicare. And the UAW knows it.