{news} FYI: The Best Corporate Health Plan

[Justine McCabe]

"And here's a prediction: A serious campaign based on single-payer national 
health insurance could propel someone to the White House in 2008."

 The Best Corporate Health Plan

 By Jonathan Tasini

 June 30, 2005, tompaine.com

 http://www.tompaine.com/

 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.

 There are two responses that the business community has to
 this crisis: eliminate health coverage altogether or shift
 the costs of health care to workers. You want a headache,
 check this out: according to the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation,
 the annual premium that a health insurer charges an employer
 for a health plan covering a family of four averaged $9,950,
 or $829 a month in 2004; workers contributed $2,661, or 10
 percent more than they spent in 2003; and, for single
 coverage, workers contributed an average of $558 toward the
 $3,695 annual premium.

 I'm not here to argue the moral imperative for single-payer
 national health care. Instead, progressives need to turn
 their rhetoric to hard-core, good 'ole patriotic, rally
 'round the flag' American business interests. In a 'Working
 in America' column six months ago , I wrote that 'companies
 that don't advocate for a single-payer system are endangering
 shareholder value, throwing money into a system that is
 dragging down profits and competitiveness.' That has become
 clearer as time passes.

 What better example can one give than GM, the once-proud gold
 standard of American industry whose bonds' credit rating has
 plummeted to junk status? GM will spend $5.6 billion this
 year on health care for its employees and retirees-more money
 than it shells out for steel for its cars-which means every
 GM car we buy costs $1,500 more because of health care.
 Speaking to GM shareholders recently, GM's CEO Rick Waggoner
 said, 'Our $1,500-per-unit health care expense represents a
 significant disadvantage versus our foreign-based
 competitors. Left unaddressed, this will make a big
 difference in our ability to compete in investment,
 technology and other key contributors to our future success.'

 Now don't get me wrong: GM has an obligation to its workers.
 And its saber-rattling threats that the United Auto Workers
 must agree by today to health care benefit cuts for auto
 workers is outrageous, and perhaps illegal (full disclosure:
 I am a UAW member). But the problem is unavoidable.

 Even that poster child for corporate malfeasance, Wal-Mart,
 would have good reason to get behind a single-payer plan, if
 only to get some good press. Wal-Mart workers, who make an
 average of $14,000 a year, are forced to pay a $1,000
 deductible-when they qualify at all for the company's stingy
lan. Since most workers can't foot that bill, taxpayers
 already subsidize Wal-Mart: 13 percent of its 91,000 workers
 in Florida are enrolled in the state Medicaid program, 10,000
 children of Wal-Mart workers in Georgia rely on state-funded
 health care and the company leads the pack in this dubious
 category in other states such as Iowa, Tennessee, Wisconsin,
 Arkansas and New Hampshire.

 Some executives are starting to see the light. I recently had
 an exchange with a senior executive from a national employer
 lobbying group who said, 'You're right that some are
 thinking, 'How much worse can it be?' Thus far, though,
 national health care is a bridge too far.' Instead, companies
 are fiddling around the edges, engaging in discussions with
 various health care advocacy groups-but always falling short
 of the single-payer option. So we have to build that bridge
 and lead-or kick-corporate America across it.

 Only a single-payer national plan will work. All the other
 gimmicks relying on market-based, employer-centered insurance
 have failed. The premiums for employer-based health insurance
 rose by 11.2 percent in 2004, the fourth consecutive year of
 double-digit increases-and every single type of plan (health
 maintenance organizations, preferred provider organizations,
 and point-of-service plans) registered double-digit
 increases. And, ultimately, state-based single-payer plans,
 while admirable, can't survive in the long term because they
 will lack the economies of scale only a sweeping national
 plan can make possible.

 We need to put the real onus on corporate executives with a
 carrot-and-stick approach that is based on a clear principle:
 your ability to compete depends on single-payer health care.
 For those who refuse, it's time to mount an aggressive
 corporate and public relations campaign. One shareholder
 approach might be to cut back executive pay and benefits each
 year by the same percentage total health care costs amount to
 in the corporate bottom-line. If that doesn't work, a more
serious step would call for divesting from companies that
 oppose single-payer.

 Organized labor and their allies in the huge public employee
 pension funds should lead the fight. If unions represented
 the same proportion of the workforce they did in the 1950s-35
 percent-40 million people would not be without health
 insurance because more people would be under unionized,
 employer-based health plans. And we'd end up with a different
 system because unions-whose main fight at the bargaining
 table today is over health care costs-would have a stronger
 hand to play in lobbying for single-payer. But even in its
 smaller state, unions need to take the fight on for the
 public good. Pension funds, representing hundreds of
 thousands of current and retired workers who face health care
 cost pressure, have a significant financial interest in
 seeing the system changed; the California Public Employees
 Retirement System alone has $177 billion that it could use as
 leverage.

 When I first broached this notion with colleagues, they
 snorted, 'Yeah, but how do you pass this kind of thing with
 Republicans controlling the government?' That's a fair
 point-if your thought process is driven solely through a 'red
 state, blue state' prism.

 But I'd wager that the wind could shift dramatically, driven
 by a population of all colors that can coax or bludgeon the
 business community into doing what's in its best economic
 self-interest. And here's a prediction: A serious campaign
 based on single-payer national health insurance could propel
 someone to the White House in 2008.

 [Jonathan Tasini  is president of the Economic Future Group
 and writes his "Working In America" columns for TomPaine.com
 on an occasional basis.]

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