http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060926/AUTO01/609260346/1148
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060926/LIFESTYLE03/609260338/1148
These articles highlight the gap between the healthcare costs of the Big Three and their competitors, but also the difference between healthcare costs in the U.S., Canada, and Japan.
Each vehicle assembled in the United States cost GM $1,525 for health care; those made in Canada cost GM $197. Toyotas built in Japan cost $97.
An excerpt from the second article:
......General Motors Corp.'s best minds fight a losing battle against the bills for Nexium prescriptions, heart bypass surgeries and CT scans that flood in at a rate of $10,000 a minute.
Bradley gets a cup of coffee, and GM has spent $50,000 on health care. He goes to lunch, and $600,000 is gone. He takes a three-day weekend on his sailboat and returns to $43 million in medical bills.
For 12 years, Bradley, GM's director of health care policy, and the corporate soldiers in the automaker's health care war room have waged an unprecedented battle against health care costs, throwing more money, time and energy into the issue than any company in history. GM has used its size to strong-arm doctors and bully drug companies. It built the largest wellness education program in the country, convinced workers to pay more for medical care and cajoled hospitals to incorporate assembly-line efficiencies into emergency rooms.
"We've thrown everything at the monster," Bradley said.
But those efforts have barely slowed the staggering surge in medical bills that many analysts believe is a bigger threat to GM than is Toyota.
The world's largest automaker is being driven deep into financial trouble not only by the cars of a competitor, but also by the medical bills of its own workers and retirees.
Last year, GM spent $5.3 billion on health care -- enough to buy a GMC Yukon for each of its U.S. employees. By 2008, General Motors will likely spend more on health care in the United States than on its hourly-worker payroll.
The economics have become so upside-down that Warren Buffett calls GM "a health and benefits company with an auto company attached."
One out of every 87 Americans over the age of 65 has their medical bills paid by GM, as does one out of every 279 Americans of all ages.
So large is the program that someone has a GM health card in virtually every ZIP code in the United States. So costly is the program that the automaker's health care spending alone is more than the total revenue of 121 companies on the Fortune 500 list.
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