However, by national health, they dont mean single-payer (or government) coverage (which would definitely bite them as corporate taxpayers) but some hybrid, cobbled-together deal involving insurance companies, government subsidies or tax-credits, and the like. A few of the Democratic presidential candidates are gingerly getting on board the same snake-oil solution, just as ethanol has now become the energy solution du jour.
I'm about a third of the way through Daniel Yergin's The Prize, and it's clear in the case of the oil companies that the proper metaphor for them would be socialized piracy.
BobW
--- Michael Smith <mjs at smithbowen.net> wrote:
> On Friday 20 July 2007 15:37, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> > Clearly the bourgeoisie agrees, becaues it'd make
> business sense for
> > Ford and GM to promote national health insurance,
> and they haven't.
>
> I wonder to what extent Ford and GM are simply
> avoiding a war with the
> insurance companies, HMOs, and other components of
> the "health" sector who
> would surely be seriously threatened or completely
> destroyed by national
> health insurance.
>
> I know our idealization of the enterprise is that
> it's like a pirate ship,
> maximizing its own returns without any concern for
> anybody or anything else,
> but from what I've seen of the upper bourgeoisie,
> they tend to belong to the
> same clubs, have interlocking interests, talk to
> each other -- it's
> simultaneously contentious and collusive.
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