By Bruce Dixon | Black Agenda Report

The U.S. auto industry is in deep trouble. But there are plenty of reasons to disbelieve the explanations of and doubt the possible solutions to the crisis put forth by our bipartisan political elite, their mouthpieces in the corporate media and public office.

The biggest diff erence between U.S. and foreign auto production is that only U.S. automakers are saddled with the burden of paying the health care costs of current workers and retirees. To make matters worse, beginning in the Reagan administration, federal laws allowed automakers to spend their employee pension funds on executive bonuses and bad investments and not repay them. After three decades of executive raids on the money that should pay for pensions and medical care, there is nothing left.

Built-in edge
When foreign automakers began locating plants in the U.S. in the 1980s, they enjoyed a competitive edge over U.S. production lines located in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin and Illinois for a generation because their younger workforces had fewer medical bills and they had no retired workers to pay pensions and medical benefits for.

Universal free health care is the secret competitive weapon of the Japanese, Canadian and European auto industries. Unless and until this competitive advantage is equalized, manufacturing automobiles and practically everything else will be far more expensive inside the U.S. than outside it. No amount of money thrown at the auto industry can solve that, and without medical and retirement expenses, foreign automakers are guaranteed to have the extra cash to match and beat anything U.S. automakers invest in innovative green technologies. Most U.S. politicians omit this vital contextual information because they or their parties take big money from the private insurers.

What is single payer health care?
Physicians For a National Health Care Plan defines it as “a system in which a single public or quasi-public agency organizes health financing, but delivery of care remains largely private…Under a single-payer system, all Americans would be covered for all medically necessary services, including: doctor, hospital, long-term care, mental health, dental, vision, prescription drug and medical supply costs. Patients would regain free choice of doctor and hospital, and doctors would regain autonomy over patient care...”

For years, Detroit congressman John Conyers has introduced single payer legislation and sought the sponsorship of his fellow members of Congress. In the current session, that bill is HR 676, the Conyers- Kucinich National Health Care Act, and has been endorsed by dozens of city councils, state legislatu

res, county boards, and 90 members of Congress, including more than thirty members of the Congressional Black Caucus. If single payer legislation does not make it to the floor early in the next Congress, the blame can only be laid at the feet of the new president and his party.

While President-elect Obama has promised what he has called “universal health care,” he and his advisors have explicitly rejected single payer health care. Th e “solutions” advanced by Obama will simply make government money available to consumers to buy private health care, and will subsidize a new risk pool, no doubt through other private insurers, for those who can’t find any aff ordable private coverage. Certainly, it does not relieve the U.S. auto industry or other sectors of their crushing health care debt.

An essential part of any auto industry deal must be single payer health care, or the solution will be as deceitful a sham as the Wall Street bailout. Only single payer health care will protect auto industry and other U.S. jobs and deliver the universal health care that tens of millions of Americans voted for in November. Here’s what to do:

• Get the information about single payer health care and spread what the corporate media won’t. At the Physicians for a National Health Care Plan website, www.pnhp.org, you will find enough info to answer anybody’s questions on single payer, and to provide answers to all the lies and propaganda spread by the insurance companies. Th is is the stuff to write about, to blog about, to send and forward to everyone on your email list.

• Email, call and visit your member of Congress about single payer health care and saving U.S. jobs. Remind your elected representative that U.S. industries cannot compete with those in societies that off er free health care. Demand that single payer health care ought to be part of any legislative deal to save U.S. auto companies. Group visits of five or more people to district offices are the most potent weapons of persuasion. Nearly all members of Congress have open hours during which constituents can make an appointment or drop to discuss issues of importance.

• Call a public meeting or teach-in at your school or neighborhood to talk about single payer health care. Pnhp.org and others can help you arrange authoritative and knowledgeable speakers. Video that so others not present at the event can see it.

Producing an aroused public makes it easier for the new administration and its party to do the right thing. But if we don’t get loud about the link between saving jobs and delivering health care early in an Obama administration, a precious opportunity will be lost that we may never see again.

Bruce Dixon is managing editor of BlackAgendaReport.com. Contact him at bruce.dixon@blackagendareport.com.