Public Healthcare creates jobs in Canada

• The U.S. automakers are moving more production to Canada where a national health care program provides coverage for workers and their families for less than one-fifth of the cost of health benefits on the U.S. side of the border.
• Benefit costs account for 28.8 percent of compensation costs for private sector production workers in the U.S., compared with 17.0 percent in Japan, 16.6 percent in Canada and 17.6 percent in the United Kingdom. Three-fourths of the difference in benefit costs stems from the private health insurance system in the U.S.
• http://www.laborresearch.org/story2.php/380

• The United States has lost nearly 3 million manufacturing jobs since July 2001, with 43 consecutive months of manufacturing-employment decline, from about 17.3 million jobs to about 14.3 million in February 2004. During the same period, the manufacturing workforce in Canada has generally remained stable, at about 2 million jobs, even though the unemployment rate is higher there, at 7.4 percent, than in the United States, where it is 5.6 percent.
• And, although both nations lost auto manufacturing jobs in 2000 and 2003, the decline was only 4 percent in Canada, compared with 14 percent in the United States.
• http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34899-2004Mar5?language=printer

• In contrast, the single payer system that Canada has used for the last 25 years has drastically simplified their administration costs. For instance, it takes more people to administer Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts that it does to administer the entire health care system of Canada. Before Canada implemented their national health program, their health costs were the same portion of their economy as in the U.S. After they implemented their program, their costs stabilized at 9% while U.S. costs have increased to 14%. They spend one tenth of what U.S. health care providers spend on overhead.
• According the Harris Poll of all industrial nations, Canadians are the most satisfied with their health care.
• http://bcn.boulder.co.us/health/healthwatch/canada.html

• “Nothing is more important to us. Nothing." Those were the words from General Motors chief finance executive John Devine to a packed crowd of auto industry insiders in a forum at Traverse City. The topic of question: healthcare. More to the point, the ever rising costs of healthcare and the possibility of it impeding on domestic carmakers and their ability to compete.
• Some in the industry are beginning to contemplate the idea of a nationalized system of healthcare. The Detroit Free Press reports that Larry Denton, CEO of auto supplier Dura Automotive Systems, Inc. thinks the time may have come for the government to step in. “I spent a lot of time in Canada, and I used to think their health-care plan was a bad idea. Now after being back here I'm not so sure. We're about the only modernized country not doing it and the companies here pay a 30-percent penalty because the rules are different.”
• http://www.automotivearticles.com/Rising_Cost_of_Healthcare_Pressures_Automakers_.shtml

And apprently Toyota feels the same way...