Maybe Now We’ll Get Universal Healthcare

[Originally posted on goofyblog 3.6.07]

There’s an interview with Noam Chomsky on AlterNet this past weekend. Mostly it’s about Iraq and our foreign policy worldwide. Chomsky’s take is that the true constituency of the Bush Administration (and, mostly, the Dems, too) is not us, the people. Corporate profits are what runs our politics, polls be damned. Let’s see if he’s onto something. Here’s what he has to say about healthcare. Recently, Wal-mart and GM have stepped into the healthcare debate and more corps will follow. His analysis will be tested.

Chomsky: [O]n health insurance. Here’s an issue where, for the general population, it’s been the leading domestic issue, or close to it, for years. And there’s a consensus for a national healthcare system on the model of other industrial countries, maybe expanding Medicare to everyone or something like that. Well, that’s off the agenda, nobody can talk about that. The insurance companies don’t like it, the financial industry doesn’t like and so on.

Now there’s a change taking place. What’s happening is that manufacturing industries are beginning to turn to support for it because they’re being undermined by the hopelessly inefficient U.S. healthcare system. It’s the worst in the industrial world by far, and they have to pay for it. Since it’s employer-compensated, in part, their production costs are much higher than those competitors who have a national healthcare system.

Take GM. If it produces the same car in Detroit and in Windsor across the border in Canada, it saves, I forget the number, I think over $1000 with the Windsor production because there’s a national healthcare system, it’s much more efficient, it’s much cheaper, it’s much more effective.

So the manufacturing industry is starting to press for some kind of national healthcare. Now it’s beginning to put it on the agenda. It doesn’t matter if the population wants it. What 90% of the population wants would be kind of irrelevant. But if part of the concentration of corporate capital that basically runs the country — another thing we’re not allowed to say but it’s obvious — if part of that sector becomes in favor then the issue moves onto the political agenda.