20th Feb 2009, 15:52

Business owners no doubt also have some definite tax advantages, buying some pretty nice new vehicles, and also insure under the business with other fleet vehicles. My concern is increasingly seeing more and more vehicles becoming increasingly boring with the potato-bean shape underpowered, uninspired vehicles that no doubt sell, but why is my question. My friend with her new Prius cares zero about cars, just a vehicle that gets her there. Maybe she finds enjoyment reaching the destination afterward, but not driving there. I enjoy driving vehicles, and granted this is a full size truck review, so it's a truck.

The potato shape may work well in a wind tunnel, and there is more fitting people inside to consider than design and handling in many cases. As an example, I had a new Datsun 280ZX 2+2 (back seat) in 1982 that still was my "family car" with young children and it was a very nice design, fun to drive although a bit underpowered but I enjoyed it.

When my kids got older I had 2 seaters and a family car that was still performance oriented at least. It would be nice to see some more inspired designs that are fun to drive and a vehicle you want to run to and drive. I would be so disappointed to drive many of the 2009 vehicles I'm seeing. I hope to never lose my zest for driving - maybe when I am old and poor sighted that may not be a factor and I'll just write a check for a bland car and hand me the keys. Maybe driving is just becoming a basic appliance for many people.

20th Feb 2009, 18:58

My good friend in Canada lost his mother last year. She spent 31 days in intensive care. The bill? $0 thanks to Canada's excellent health care system. My mother spent 3 days in intensive care some years ago. Her bill was $37,000+. I'll take Canada or the UK's system ANY DAY over ours. My friends in Canada and the UK constantly rib me about our "barbaric" health care system because it helps only those who are wealthy and allows the poor to die without care. That IS barbaric. I'd rather wait 30 days for an elective procedure than die because I can't pay $20,000 an hour for a surgeon's new Mercedes. If we had socialized medicine it would increase the productivity of our country and save billions in tax money. By denying people health care we allow them to succumb to easily treatable conditions and end up an even BIGGER drain on taxpayers.

21st Feb 2009, 09:22

"My friends in Canada and the UK constantly rib me about our "barbaric" health care system because it helps only those who are wealthy and allows the poor to die without care. That IS barbaric."

Yeah... particularly if it were true. Most hospitals either won't or can't by law turn away a patient based on their ability to pay -- something about that "do no harm" thing. So this isn't about the poor being left to die. It's about cost, efficiency, and quality. In fact the poor and the rich are fine. It's the self employed and uninsured middle class that are the real issue because if they get seriously ill, they may go bankrupt trying to pay for care. Once they are bankrupt they're covered. Then they will qualify for medical assistance.

My wife had worked for public health both providing direct care and assessing for other agency care for 10 years. Now she is the director of a hospice and homecare program in central Minnesota. These issues are a daily reality for her. There is a very real healthcare gap problem.

But will socialized medicine help? It may or may not depending on how it is implemented. Right now, for example, insurance creates a major cost vs. care issue. Years ago, before large sums of people were insured, care was less expensive for a couple of reasons.

#1 Insurance separates cost from care. So patients naturally want the latest care regardless of cost. Before that was the case people had to look at the cost of a procedure and providers had to keep costs down if they wanted to get paid.

#2 Insurance companies are deep pockets that just spread out the costs among thousands of people. So without these deep pockets care HAD to be less costly.

If the government solution is simply to insure everyone, the end result will be excellent care but at even higher prices than today... even though caregivers wouldn't have to defray the costs of non-payers among paying "customers".

I think this would be the case simply because the government is inefficient at most things and because adding to the insurance roles only makes the afore-mentioned problems even worse.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but since this is a automotive site, the connection to healthcare is tenuous at best. This comment among others is really a prime example of what "off-topic" really means :) So... can we get back to arguing about cars?

21st Feb 2009, 09:26

I posted this comment on another thread. It seems appropriate here too, so I'll just paste it:

"The biggest financial issue facing the U.S. auto industry is the huge cost of healthcare for workers and retirees."

That and paying their workers twice as much, a burdensome pension system, other "legacy" costs, union requirements that force manufacturers to use more workers than necessary to do any given job, and (lest we all forget) a major recession brought on by a collapse in the credit markets (credit people need to buy cars).

A long drawn out debate about "socialized" health care would be inappropriate to this blog. But, because it's been mentioned here and on other threads, I'd like to chime in.

All available figures related to the cost of such a system are mere estimates and not hard sums. The government doesn't know for sure how much this system would cost (or whether it would be more or less than the auto bailout). Some of the reasons (actually questions) for this are:

Will people overburden the new system every time the hypochondriac media says that a sniffle is a sign of cancer?

How efficient will the system be?

How efficient will the associated bureaucracy be?

Will inefficiency eat up benefits born of scale?

Will voters demand the Nth degree of care with the latest technology?

Will the government then need to regulate prices on medical supplies?

How high up the line will it go?

To keep costs down, will the government begin to regulate our choices (Do you exercise? Do you smoke? Do you drink alcohol? Do you drive a lot?)?

With each new area comes more regulation and more bureaucracy. Will that become unbearably expensive?

They don't know and neither do we. We just know that health care has gotten too expensive, so we're casting around for solutions. Because of Washington's pro/con culture, we can't be sure that those who compile figures are truly independent and covering all the angles.

My biggest concerns with this type of system are that:

#1 Over time it will almost certainly cost more than current estimates suggest (it IS the government after all).

#2 It will erode our freedom further as the government tries to keep costs under control by regulating risky behavior.

I'm not offering a solution, just a warning. Just because someone (even a sincere someone like Mr. Obama, for example) says that it will cost $XXXXXXXX, doesn't make it true. All such figures are little more than educated flights of fancy. Let's just hope and pray that they get it right.