GM, Ford, Chrysler Discuss Joint Health-Care Fund, People Say

[gravity]

Source: Bloomberg

By Jeff Green and Jeff Bennett

June 9 (Bloomberg) -- General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler may create an independent health-insurance fund to trim their combined $114 billion in future retiree health-care obligations, five people with direct knowledge of the talks said.

The U.S. automakers would each contribute to the fund to pay for health-care benefits of United Auto Workers retirees, said the people, who didn't want to be identified because the discussions are private. The talks are preliminary so the fund's size and how much each company would contribute haven't been determined, they said.

...

Even with the recent concessions by the UAW, retiree benefits remain the U.S. carmakers' biggest cost disadvantage compared with Toyota in the U.S. The difference is as much as $22 an hour, according to the Harbour-Felax Group of Royal Oak, Michigan.

GM had about 357,000 union retirees in the U.S. at the end of last year. Toyota, which doesn't disclose U.S. health-care spending, has 269 U.S. retirees. Ford reported 570,000 active union and non-union employees, retirees and dependents.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aGI_mzsR3Lz8&refer=home

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There is a better solution to fix this mess: Universal healthcare

[area51]

1. "There is a better solution to fix this mess: Universal healthcare"

Exactly. It's the only thing which will allow us to compete w/other countries, and it's the only pro-life thing to do.

[phantom power]

2. It's amusing to see them moving in that direction.

As you say, it just begs the question: why not go all the way, and do universal health care?

You can practically see the smoke coming out their ears. "We can't have socialized medicine! What we need is... a system where we all pool our resources to provide better health care for everybody! Yeah! That's the ticket! Not like those cheese eating Europeans, who pool their resources..."

Oh, never mind.
:eyes:

[PurityOfEssence]

3. When will free-market ideologues realize that employer supported health care destroys them?

Ug. Private capitalism good. Ug. Government bad.

Well, here we are crushing all employers by forcing them to carry huge burdens to cover their workers. Foreign companies get to skate completely. La-dee-da. Here, however, there's a huge burden on anything created because employers have to support their benefit packages.

Single payer. Let's just call it SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and be done with it. Why should we shackle the glorious movers and shakers of our selfish individualistic system? It drags everyone and everything down, but it's done at the altar of market beauty.

It'll only get worse, but the ideologues won't bend regardless of any overwhelming information.

This is mean, stupid and irrational.

[PurityOfEssence]

4. When will free-market ideologues realize that employer supported health care destroys them?

Ug. Private capitalism good. Ug. Government bad.

Well, here we are crushing all employers by forcing them to carry huge burdens to cover their workers. Foreign companies get to skate completely. La-dee-da. Here, however, there's a huge burden on anything created because employers have to support their benefit packages.

Single payer. Let's just call it SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and be done with it. Why should we shackle the glorious movers and shakers of our selfish individualistic system? It drags everyone and everything down, but it's done at the altar of market beauty.

It'll only get worse, but the ideologues won't bend regardless of any overwhelming information.

This is mean, stupid and irrational.