If a small company makes a serious effort to underwrite healthcare for it's employees, it's biting off more than it'll easily chew, if at all. And it's breaking the back of giant corporations, too.
We have to separate health insurance from employment - this was one of the goofiest moves ever made in our history, and it has put a burden (thanks to rising costs induced by the insurance industry) on all American business, large and small.
Is it any wonder that the auto companies have moved a lot of plants across the border to Canada? They all know that health insurance in Canada costs a lot less than here and is a whole lot more effective and efficient, covering everyone with quality care.
But why are the auto companies silent now?
The coalition of big biz and the insurance-pharmaceutical behemoth is real - the board room guys and gals all stick together, pretty much like flies caught on flypaper. Covering each others back, they're not about to break ranks.
But the auto industry could save billions, not by cutting jobs, reducing pensions for the retired and/or forcing workers to take a lower wage, but by helping this nation build a first-class, single-payer, health insurance program.
First proposed by Truman and supported, in some form or fashion by every administration since, a national health insurance program is clearly the answer to a huge set of ills associated with the current status, but whether the American people can join hands with our elected officials and buck the powers of the board room remains to be seen.
Americans are easily bamboozled by power and wealth, and driven unrealistically by an individualism ideology which blinds us to the common good so essential to the well-being of the Republic.
We are becoming a nation pitted against itself in our striving for material prosperity and security, neither of which will ever be ours as long as we refuse to be our brother's and sister's keeper.
We can do better by one another. Health insurances systems around the world work so much more effectively and efficiently than ours right now. We spend tens of thousands more per person than any other country in the world, yet our numbers are horrendous - we're ranked 37th by the World Health Organization, a notch below Costa Rico and one above Slovenia.
Friends, can we not do better?
Slave Museum in Aruba: A way station for R&R after the "Middle Passage". Its good business to get slaves rested, well, and fed for market in the US. I was struck by the economic stake that slave owners have in maintaining the health of thier human production assets.
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