FEELING SORRY FOR GM

Note this story (excerpt):

For G.M., the nation's largest private purchaser of health services and of drugs from Viagra to Lipitor, the projected cost of providing health care benefits to current and future retirees .... is a staggering $63 billion.

While soaring medical costs are an issue for all employers in the United States, for older domestic manufacturers the nation's health care system is a competitive double whammy. That is particularly true for G.M., the world's largest - but far from the most profitable - automaker.

G.M. covers the health care costs of 1.1 million Americans, or close to half a percent of the total population, though fewer than 200,000 are active workers while the rest are retirees, children or spouses. Not only are such costs escalating rapidly, but G.M.'s rivals, based in Japan and Germany, have virtually no retirees from their newer operations in the United States and, at home, the expenses are largely assumed by taxpayers through nationalized health care systems"

You get the drift? The NYT is trying to drum up support for nationalized medicine by getting you to feel sorry for GM! The audacity of it all is rather breathtaking. Where to start? I suppose the first thing I should mention is the elephant in the bedroom: The Japanese manufacturers in Japan have a similar problem! They too have a lifetime obligation to their employees. So if they can hack it without government support, why can't GM?

The next point is the irony of anyone on the Left pretending to feel sorry for GM. Maybe I missed something, but isn't GM the great capitalist ogre that all good comrades want to see dead? Or do they really believe that what is good for GM is good for the USA? There would have to be a zillion Leftists who have furiously denied it!

The third point is that businesses who make bad decisions have to take the consequences of that. If every bad decision made by business got a bailout from the taxpayer, the nation would be broke in a week. GM clearly made unwise healthcare deals with its unions so it is just going to have to pay for those decisions.

And even if GM went broke over it (which nobody is suggesting), there would still be enough assets to pay for the healthcare obligations it contracted for.