WSJ Wash. Wire - GM, UAW Plan Joint Lobbying for National Health Care

[Pirate Smile]

GM, UAW Plan Joint Lobbying for National Health Care
Mike Spector reports on a new lobbying organization.

Detroit is abuzz about the tentative agreement between General Motors Corp. and the United Auto Workers union that would transfer more than $50 billion in retiree health-care obligations from GM to a union-managed trust. But buried in the highlight book of the contract terms is another significant health-care plan: Lobbying.

It mentions the establishment of a group called the “National Institute for Health Care Reform.” Read: Lobbyists for national health care.

A joint-venture between GM and the UAW, the organization’s mission is to “serve as a premier research and educational health care reform center dedicated to understanding, evaluating and developing thoughtful and innovative reform to improve the medical delivery system in the United States and expand access to high quality, affordable and accountable health care coverage for all Americans,” according to the UAW-GM contract highlights report. GM will pay $3 million a year over the next five years to fund the institute.

Ballooning health care costs have weighed down GM, Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC. GM appears to have won an agreement to get its health care liability off its books, but it is on the hook for backstop payments should the union-run trust dry up amid health-care inflation.

No word yet on who might run this new lobbying arm — a GM spokesman says plans for the institute are still in the early stages. The spokesman declined to characterize the institute but said: “The quality, value and access of health care has always been a priority of ours and will remain so.”

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2007/10/03/gm-uaw-plan-joint-lobbying-for-national-health-care/

[focusfan]

1. It`s about time

I hope everyone wakes up to just what a disaster health insurance is and how much this industry needs to be done away with.It just plain doesn`t work.Just look at it like this with healthcare for profit why would you want healthy people?