Make the Titans Battle

The victory of Barack Obama has given me, like many Americans, a sense of relief. In a couple of months our Sock-Puppet in Chief and his neocon handlers will be off cutting brush somewhere. I suppose war crimes trials would be too much to ask.

Even so, as a friend once warned me after Clinton’s election, “The left wing of the Capitalist Party has won.” President-elect Obama will have all the usual suspects chattering in his ears about how to benefit big business at the expense of the general public. We need to hold him to account, push him to do the right thing, and propose policies that benefit the general populace.

There are two big issues facing the president-elect that can be approached synergistically. One is economic stimulus, and the other is health care finance. The poster child for economic stimulus is the U.S. auto industry. After spending a decade or two profitably and short-sightedly building 3-ton SUVs, they are facing declining sales and, in the case of GM, impending bankruptcy. The big three need to redesign, retool, and refinance. They are asking for $25 billion from the government to do so. I am reluctant to reward these corporate dinosaurs for their greed and pinheaded behavior, but I don’t want to see hundreds of thousands of autoworkers joining the unemployment lines, either.

On a parallel track, health care costs continue to climb and 47 million Americans have no health insurance. In poll after poll, two-thirds of Americans say that the U.S. government has a responsibility to ensure health care for all. Two thirds say that they would pay higher taxes to achieve universal health care. Three quarters say they would pay more taxes to ensure universal health care for children under 18. And yet the subject of government sponsored health care isn’t even on the agenda in Washington. Both Obama and McCain proposed healthcare plans that enshrined the private health insurance companies. The reason is, of course, that the health insurance companies have near infinite money and the political clout that comes with it. Between soft money, bundled contributions and the health insurance industry’s multi-million dollar propaganda machine our (?) Congress faces inevitable defeat.

The two subjects connect if you realize that car companies spend more per vehicle on health insurance benefits than on steel, roughly $1500. Given that the U.S. spends about twice as much per person for health care compared to industrialized nations with national health coverage (with worse outcomes), you’d think that with national health insurance we could knock $750 off the cost of manufacturing an automobile. Let’s be conservative and put the savings at $500 per unit. With about 7.6 million passenger cars coming off the line every year, there’s $3.8 billion a year, or $38 billion over a decade.

President Obama and the progressive caucus of the Democratic majority need to make the case for universal health care to the carmakers. To Ford, GM, and Chrysler, private health insurance is a huge cost driver. Rather than fight the health insurance lobby directly, the Obama administration should pit the auto lobby against them. Not just the auto lobby – every major industry is struggling with health care costs. Get them all to gang up on the insurers and beat them into the ground. It is the manacles of fiduciary responsibility that cause the insurance company executives to strive to extract all they can from us. This same motivation can drive other industries to fight on our side.