In G.M.’s Sight Lines: Washington and Tokyo
By William J. Holstein
The New York Times
December 18, 2005
An interview with Rick Wagoner, the chairman and chief executive of General Motors
Q. Were your problems caused by internal decisions, or external forces?
A. Well, it’s obviously a combination of both. I think it would be disingenuous for us to point to things like U.S. health care policy or trade policy and the exchange rates, things like that, and say they are the whole cause of the problem. The flip side, though, is that anybody who says they are not part of the problem just doesn’t have their feet placed in reality.
Like it or not, if we pay $1,500 per car for health care and our cheap global competitors pay $200, that’s a disadvantage. And we don’t have that situation because we’re stupid – it’s been the U.S. government policy for us to pay that bill and we’ve been doing it.
Q. What should the government do?
A. I don’t understand why the U.S. government isn’t more proactive on health care. Regardless of whether one believes in sort of the individual-responsibility model or single-payer system, there’s a lot of things that can be done to get the cost of health care and the quality of health care moving in the right direction. I think this is an area where strong leadership from the government could play a key role. Information technology is one possibility. Another is leveraging the buying power of the government, which is the biggest purchaser of health care under Medicare and things of that sort.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/18/business/yourmoney/
18advi.html?pagewanted=all
Comment: Leaders of all three major U.S. auto corporations have been calling for a “national solution” to the burden caused by the escalating costs of employer-sponsored health plans, but they have been hesitant to endorse a single-payer national health insurance program.
One advantage of an interview is that it is frequently possible to extract more candid views from the person being interviewed. Wagoner’s statement that “regardless of whether one believes in sort of the individual-responsibility model or single-payer system” certainly indicates that Wagoner does acknowledge the credibility of the single payer model, without the necessity of actually endorsing it. More importantly, his use of “sort of” in the phrase “sort of the individual-responsibility model,” indicates that he has not been convinced that this is a clearly defined model that would effectively resolve the health care crisis issues.
Although Wagoner may not be ready to risk offending his friends who oppose social insurance by leading the charge to single payer, he has telegraphed that he has no intention of standing in the way of comprehensive reform. In fact, he continues to plead that the U.S. government must be more proactive on health care.