Socialised medicine is good for the country, jobs, economy and business

You know the crack about socialised medicine? Well that was because Mr. Rudy Giuliani from NY 9/11 fame came over here and mumbled something about how happy he was that he had his medical problem in USA rather than the UK. If he was here, then his chances of survival would be lower compared to the USA. That's a fair point.

Another fair point is that long term medical care is available to all 58 million Britishers unlike the 50 odd million who only get emergency care and are not covered under insurance! But the other aspect which Mr. Giuliani forgets and should be able to see if he just peeks out of his front door is the fact that every Detroit car is loaded with almost $1,500 of Healthcare liabilities.

Which is the reason why the recent GM strike happened. Which is why GM is hiring more outside USA than inside, employment is actually falling in GM within USA. The system of solely asking employers to pick up all healthcare costs of existing and retired employees means that employers go to ridiculous lengths to avoid these costs, up to and including moving production outside, legal vehicle arbitrage, and so on and so forth.

And because there is no national health system, you need to pay for insurance with your own money which is vastly inefficient and very expensive. With the result? The bankrupt company employees are severely punished either by bad health or good health with bad pensions (as they have to dip into their savings!). More importantly, the growth of jobs with no healthcare coverage is growing at a stonking rate.

This impacts the poor and low income and low skilled disproportionately Companies wouldn't mind paying benefits to high payers as the incremental cost of benefits is vastly lower than the increased value added of higher skilled and high pay employees. So what happens? lower end manufacturing and service jobs move outside the country. If service jobs are required in country, then they are increasingly without healthcare.

Dont take my word for it, see what Craig Barrett, Chairman of Intel is warning about. I quote:

Mr Barrett said failure to curb the $2,000bn annual healthcare
bill would compromise the global competitiveness of the US economy. “Healthcare
is the Achilles heel of the US in terms of competitiveness,” said Mr Barrett in
an interview with the Financial Times. He said healthcare costs for US companies
were so high that it was cheaper for some to hire new employees in a low-cost
country than to pay for healthcare benefits for American workers and their
families.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!