The New York Times
November 27, 2004
This Year, Ontario May Pass Michigan in Making Vehicles
By Danny Hakim
Michigan has been the heart of the auto industry since Henry Ford started mass-producing the Model T a century ago, but the Midwestern state is poised to be surpassed by Ontario.
The Canadian province is on course to pass Michigan this year and become the
biggest auto-producing state or province in North America, according to Ward’s Automotive, which tracks auto production data.
Canada is attractive, in part, because of its nationalized health care system, which negates perhaps the largest competitive burden faced by domestic manufacturers. G.M. spends roughly $1,400 a vehicle produced in the United States on health care, more than it spends on steel.
Comment: Old news. The costs of the health benefit programs of U.S. auto
manufacturers result in less competitive pricing of their products. But this remains in the news because the saga grows worse day by day.
How long will U.S. businesses continue to tolerate this burden?
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Message: 2
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004
Subject: PLoS Medicine – National Health Insurance for the United States
PLoS Medicine
November 2004
A National Health Insurance Program for the United States
The country must abandon its fragmented system
By Don R. McCanne
The continuing deterioration of affordability, coverage, and quality in health care makes it imperative that United States policymakers broaden their reform efforts beyond the ineffectual tinkering of incrementalism. A universal, single-payer, publicly funded and publicly administered program of social insurance would ensure access to affordable, comprehensive, high-quality health care for all. It should be the standard by which any other proposals are judged. If a better proposal can be crafted, now is the time to do it. People are dying while we delay.
http://medicine.plosjournals.org/archive/1549-1676/1/2/pdf/10.1371_journal.pmed.0010039-S.pdf
Comment: This article discusses the characteristics of the U.S. health care system that result in mediocrity in spite of our very high spending. And then it discusses options for reform.
As an open access journal, readers are encouraged to download articles and use them for their own purposes. Some may find this article to be useful in educating the public on the rationale of national health insurance.
This is the second issue of PLoS Medicine, a peer reviewed, open access, international, multidisciplinary journal of medicine from the Public Library of Science, founded by Nobel Laureate Harold Varmus and his colleagues. Their goal is to have PLoS Medicine become recognized as a premier journal of medicine, but with an important difference. All published material will be immediately available online without cost to anyone. This ensures that
the very latest information and research in medicine is always available, without financial barriers, even to poor third world countries.
For more information, including free online subscribing:
http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=index-html