[Updates below.]

Big Business' health care problem

The GOP's opposition to universal health care may take a hit as its Big Business patrons feel the bite of soaring costs.

If Rick Wagoner can't sleep at night, it could be because he's thinking about the escalating cost of health care.

General Motors Corp.'s chairman and chief executive officer said his company's health care costs worry him more than other problems, including the automaker's slipping market share and the strength of its competition.

"I don't feel good about health care costs. I don't feel good about what it does to our profitability," Wagoner said at the North American International Auto Show Sunday.

Analysts say he's got reason to fret.

With health care costs rising by double-digit percentages annually, health care has emerged as a major concern for all industries. But GM's case is more dire: The company supports the health needs of 170,200 active workers and 430,000 retirees [...]

Wagoner has proposed partnering with the government to offset some of that expense. But he knows that will be a tough sell.

"What are the odds of getting the government to cut me a $1 billion check because we have health costs to cover? Not great," he said.

And the government shouldn't cut GM that check. Corporate welfare and all. Especially since they're not alone with this problem.

But GM wouldn't have to shoulder that expense if its workforce was otherwise covered. Say, by the U.S. government.

The dynamics are headed in that direction.

What in the fucking FUCK does Kos think universal government-paid healthcare coverage would be to big businesses but anything but a massive corporate welfare program? Who cares how the "check" is cut or under what aegis its distributed! Businesses are suffocating under the costs of their human resource obligations and want to be bailed out by the state. Pay no attention to the fact that the federal govenment helped created this crisis by incentivizing, encouraging, or outright requiring businesses provide these benefits in the first place. Abolish that niggling detail and onward with the dramatic expansion of the robber nanny state!

What a jackass. And this guy is supposed to be an important figure in the Democrat/liberal grassroots system?

Previous entries on Kos: The Hypocrisy of Daily Kos, Fiscal Responsibility?, Daily Kos Wants It All, and The Democratic Party: The Party of Personal Liberty?.

UPDATED 4/19/2005 10:20am
Economic Ignorance, For the Privatization of Freedom, Sacred Cows and Kossack Hypocrisy, and Kos Strikes Again