Screwy Hoolie has taken up the gauntlet thrown by John Armor.
This could get interesting should John respond.
Here is a partial response by me...
Here is more information on Union Card Check procedure that Screwy leaves out:
Be sure to read more at this website.
The union is conducting a "card check" organizing drive at my workplace, and I am not interested in union representation. What are my rights?
If a union collects signed "authorization cards" from 50% plus 1 of the employees in a particular bargaining unit, your employer could declare that the union is the exclusive representative of all employees without a secret ballot election. Thus, it is vitally important for employees to know that signing a union authorization card will likely mean that they will never get to cast a secret ballot for or against the union.
And beware that going Union will cost your employer a competitive edge, as it has with GM (to pick an obvious example):
Healthcare costs alone impose an average cost of $1,500 per GM vehicle. Unlike most U.S. private-sector workers, GM’s unionized workers do not pay deductibles on their health coverage. According to the UAW contract in force until 2007, GM’s hourly workers pay only 7 percent of their total healthcare costs, compared to 27 to 32 percent paid by the average U.S. salaried worker. Recent “concessions” by GM’s unions will slow the hemorrhaging, but they may be too little, too late.
In contrast, most foreign-owned auto plants in the United States are non-unionized. Their workers are not as generously compensated as GM’s workers, but they are relatively well-paid with good benefits. And because their employers are not saddled with the uneconomic pension and healthcare costs of a UAW contract, they can produce cars at a more competitive price, creating more opportunity and job security for existing workers. Michigan-based GM’s toughest competition these days is not from Japan, but from Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, South Carolina and the other states where foreign-owned auto companies have established production facilities.
Source: CATO Institute
Monday, June 18, 2007
Bar Fight in the Blue Ridge: Screwy Responds
6/18/2007 04:37:00 AM
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TP,
Your GM example is perfectly illutrastive of why we must stop saddling employers with health care costs. There's no other industrialized nation doing it this way. A single-payer or similar solution would make it possible for big business to free up all that money whether folks are unionized or not.
This is a question of whether you support workers or support big corporations. If you support workers having the right to collectively bargain, then you give them a fair shot at unionizing. Otherwise you support CEOs and Boards of Directors being able to exploit their workers without consequence.
As labor unions have weakened we've also seen our jobs go overseas, so don't play the "Unions will drive jobs away!" card. It doesn't fly.
Further, to John Armor's piece. He was deliberately misinforming people by not mentioning the months of advertisements against Shuler by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. AFSCME is dropping money for ads in response to the USCoC's earnest attack ads.
A single-payor system would be a disaster, as it would not allow the Free Market to determine the best prices for drugs, services, and allow entrepreneurs to find ways to do it cheaper, faster, and better than bureaucrats.
Less than 15% of the eligible workforce belong to Unions anyway.
Unions served their purpose, and now employees have more mobility to leave a bad job for a better one. I have turned down jobs because I would have had to join a union.
I didn't address the ad campaigns issue. My theory is that it is better if the pro-union camp waste their money in this district rather than spending it somewhere it might actually do some good.
All in all, it is going to be a campaign to remember...I have even scheduled a sabbatical so I can get neck deep in it this winter. Maybe we'll finally get to meet when I'm not incornito! >=^D
"A single-payor system would be a disaster, as it would not allow the Free Market to determine the best prices for drugs, services, and allow entrepreneurs to find ways to do it cheaper, faster, and better than bureaucrats."
It seems to work a lot better in England, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, France, etc.
The "free market" is what? The government making negotiating drug prices illegal? The free market is Big Pharma advertising products and marketing to doctors - money they could be using to develop better treatments.
The deal is this TP - If your job is to make money off sick people, then you might not be interested in making folks real healthy especially when people don't have alternative medicines available through their very expensive private insurance.
I understand that your assertion is the Party line, but it's just not true. All over the world countries are providing better health care than we get in the U.S. at lower prices. With 50 million uninsured, and people like me spending hundreds of dollars per month for insurance, it seems to me that I'd like to be able to promote my own health without dreading my copays, deductibles, and "in network" provider choices.
You really think the free market is doing the American people the best service they can? I think doctors, nurses, and patients ought to get together to remove "managed care", which is by definition a bureaucrat making health care decisions, and move to a system that mirrors others in the world that work very well.
"Seems to work better in ... (wait for it) Europe?
In the UK alone, hundreds are dying while on the long waiting lists to receive care.
Many people on that list are seeking care in eastern Europe (where, oddly enough, capitalism is alive and well).
I am glad that you did not include Canada on the list...because their health care system is sending people to the US in droves to local practitioners along the border. Another case of people leaving their home country bordering the USA for something they can't get in their own country!
Big Pharma was created by Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, HMOs where artificial markets were created, kick-backs abounded, and billions were made with guaranteed markets. I thought we had learned from the mistakes of the days of mercantilism.
Outside Catastrophic Coverage, your best bet would be to put those hundreds of dollars into the market to work for you, instead of going into the investment account of the health insurance company, where they keep the money, and the profits, while they think of ways not to pay for your health care.
I have been investing my money since a 1982 Investment Class in High School, and can handle nearly anything that comes my way out of my investments. And that is accounting for nearly a hundred grand spent on a disaster that nearly got me killed. Compound Interest is a force unstoppable.
managed Care is not the Free Market, despite what some poor soul has told you, unless it is you who manages your own care.
Managed Care is Centralized Control, sort of like a Command Economy in Socialist Theory and Practice. The Republican party is ate up with Socialists as well, not just the Democrat Party.
I view HSA's as a Socialist Endeavour because the government Bureacrats still get control over YOUR money. I believe you should be able to spend your money how you want, and if you are too stupid to think about the future, then you shouldn't get the government to TAKE my money to give to you because you did not have the foresight to plan ahead.
Luckily, I attended Public (read government) Schools before they got bad, and Bibles were read in class, the pledge was recited before class, and it was an honor to be selected to help the janitor raise or lower the flag at school, where he told us what every fold meant, and of the sacrifice made by untold numbers of men so that we could live free.
Free. That means we should make our own decisions, and pay the consequences as well as reap the rewards.
I say let people donate to charities to help other people. If you see a neighbor hurting, help him. You decide where your money goes, not some bureaucratic paper shuffler thinking asbout martinis after work.
Capitalism has made America the engine of the world economy, and our health care second to none.
We do have Universal health Care, Emergency Departments are filled with people who will be seen, whether they can afford it or not.
America is that shining city on a hill that lights the world. If America were to vanish today, tomorrow, the world would sink into a disasterous Dark Age she might never emerge from for centuries.
TP - Having lived in the UK, I can safely say I never met anyone who had to wait for anything health related. No wait for doctors, specialists, operations. Not a single person I ever met there.
Regarding Canada, let's remember that's where folks want to "reimport" drugs from in order to undercut the exploitative capitalist hand of Big Pharma. It because the drugs are so much cheaper you know.
Your saying that Republicans are socialistic and that if everyone would just save up for their Cancer and then help their PTSD stricken neighbor with the chronic pain then everyone could live happy and free. That sounds nice.
Folks could start doing those things today, without any changes in the law, any changes in the system. But they don't.
They don't.
I love how patriotic you are, but our health care system is not the envy of the world, nor should it be. It's run by corporate bureaucrats whose first obligation is not to the patient but to the shareholder. It's a sick system that is obligated to put profit before people.
So you start the social revolution of having people invest wisely, save their pennies, pray against catastrophe, help their neighbors, and hug Norman Rockwell. I'll be pushing for a health care system that takes care of everybody. Because what we're doing now isn't working.
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