Big Three Solution

by folkbum

One easy way to alleviate some of the Big Three automakers' present troubles, seems to me, would be to enroll their employees and retirees as the first wave of a Medicare-for-all (or most or many) health care reform plan. Take the bulk of the cost of their health care off the books of GM, Ford, and Chrysler. We were willing to spend $700 billion to buy toxic mortgage securities; why not spend a small chunk of that (GM's health care costs a few years ago were about $6 billion a year; Medicare tends to do things more cheaply than the private sector, though) to keep the people who build our cars healthy for the next couple of years?