General Motors CEO's position on health care reform
The Wall Street Journal
February 9, 2005
Health-Care Overhaul: GM CEO Weighs In
By Alan Murray
General Motors Chief Executive Rick Wagoner… runs not only the world’s largest auto maker (a position threatened by Toyota Motor), but also the nation’s largest private health-care purchaser (a position threatened by no one.) He’s responsible for the health of some 1.1 million people, most of them retirees and their families, and paid $5.2 billion last year for the privilege. The cost of health care now adds more than $1,500 to every vehicle sold, and is rising at double-digit rates.
So it’s no surprise that health care has become Mr. Wagoner’s obsession. He’s taken the maxim attributed to Charlie Wilson — “What’s good for General Motors is good for America” — and turned it inside out. To cure what ails General Motors, he has to cure what ails America: a very sick health-care system.
“It’s not that manufacturing cars and trucks, and quality and productivity, are not important,” Mr. Wagoner said in an interview this week. “But we have processes in place to deal with those.” The health-care system, on the other hand, reminds him of the General Motors of old, with pockets of excellence but also wastelands of inefficiency. “We can do better as a country than we are doing,” he says. “We can have higher-quality services supplied at a lower cost.”
Mr. Wagoner opposes the ultimate bailout, a government-run national health-insurance system, which would take the cost off the back of big business but put control in the hands of a government bureaucracy. Instead, he favors a consumer-driven, competitive marketplace, with better health-care information systems, better research on the clinical effectiveness of different drugs and therapies, and better information on the quality of care available to consumers. He also favors curbs on malpractice suits, and a “bipartisan national strategy to address catastrophic health-care expenses.”
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/0,,SB110790726260549399,00.html?mod=todays%5Ffree%5Ffeature
Comment: Advocates of an equitable system of universal, comprehensive health care coverage have recently become enthused over statements from executives of the auto industry that we need a national solution for our health care problems.
But is the industry ready to join advocates of national health insurance in supporting an equitable, universal, comprehensive system? If you believe that we are close to bridging that divide, you also may believe that you can cross the Grand Canyon in a single leap.