In U.S., It's Pay More, Get Less GM's Health Care Costs Are Far Lower In Canada,

The company pays more for health care in the United States and, as measured by international health organizations, its workers get worse care. Those cost differences put GM and other American companies at a competitive disadvantage, while doing little to improve the health of their American workers. An auto supplier offering worse products for higher prices would have been dropped decades ago. But there is no alternative health care system for GM -- or Americans -- to turn to. Divide the nation's medical bill evenly across the population, and each of us paid $6,102 in 2004, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. That's 50 percent more than the residents of the country with the next-highest health care bill, Switzerland ($4,077), and more than double the average for industrialized nations ($2,546). Those countries provide health care for all their residents for less money than the United State spends while it leaves an estimated 46 million without insurance. As late as 1970, Americans paid about the same amount for health care as most Europeans. Since then, medical costs have risen faster in the United States than the rest of the world. http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060926/AUTO01/609260346/1148/AUTO01

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