CEOs for socialized medicine

Washington Monthly, June, 2005 by Charles Peters

"The Ford motor company lowered its earnings forecast for the year on Friday, citing higher gas prices and rising health care costs," reported The New York Times on April 9. In May, Standard & Poor's lowered its credit rating for Ford (and General Motors), and news reports cited the rising cost of health care for the company's present and former employees as a factor. I remember attending a press breakfast in 1992 and listening to Ford's then-CEO "Red" Poling complain that health costs were killing the company. It was already clear that the ability of American companies to compete in world markets was being hurt by the burden of health-care costs. It seemed that some form of national health insurance, financed by some means other than by employers, was inevitable. Optimism was heightened by Harris Wofford's 1990 victory in the Pennsylvania Senate race in which he advocated a national health-care plan.

But, of course, it all came to naught. Hillary Clinton's plan failed. Employers that do not have strong unions like Ford does have been jettisoning health insurance or reducing coverage and benefits. Medicare and Medicaid are in deep trouble. Yet we are stuck with a bunch of doctrinaire Republicans and cowardly Democrats who refuse to consider broad reform. Is it not possible that a fire could be lit under these fellows if the big corporations, instead of moaning about health care costs, used their not-inconsiderable muscle to push for the reform that is needed?