I wrote about the contention of UAW president Ron Gettelfinger that the US needs national health care so that American companies can compete with foreign rivals when his article appeared in the Wall Street Journal on Sept. 1.

Copied below are three letters in today’s edition that also smack him around pretty well.

Universal’ Health Care Cripples Economies
United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger quotes Wilbur Ross: “Every country against which we compete has universal health care. That means we probably face a 15% cost disadvantage vs. foreigners for no other reason than historical accident” (“Jump Into the Risk Pool,” editorial page, Sept. 1). Messrs. Gettelfinger and Ross do not explain where this 15% cost disadvantage comes from. Does Mr. Ross think that if we had universal government health care the taxes on his company would not go up? If Messrs. Gettelfinger and Ross think universal government health care is less expensive than private care, they are out of touch with the economics of health care.

Toyota’s new non-union San Antonio auto plant will have average wages and benefits of $35 an hour. GM’s UAW Dallas auto plant has average wages and benefits of more than $80 an hour. This results in a GM cost disadvantage of 130%. Meanwhile, UAW membership shrinks every year; its membership is currently smaller than it was in 1942. Does Mr. Gettlefinger think the major decline of his union is due to the lack of government health care?

George Vandervoort
Wilmette, Ill.

Mr. Gettelfinger reasons that to enhance the competitiveness of American companies we need to “develop well-funded public programs which cover every man, woman and child in America.” This, he says, will eliminate the “15% cost disadvantage” they have vs. foreigners. I guess by “foreigners” he means those countries whose economic growth rate is half ours, and whose income and wealth per capita is a fraction of ours.

The “well-funded public programs” he recommends are actually crippling the economies of Europe and will ultimately crush them as the inexorable force of aging demographics comes fully to bear.

Transferring individual responsibility to the government for pensions and health care only increases government responsibility but in no way increases government’s means to meet those responsibilities. Paying people who no longer work can be done only when the economy produces enough to provide for the needs of all the people. It is productivity that can save us, not bureaucracy and taxes. I’d have been able to retire years ago if, instead of giving about 6% of my earnings to Social Security and having my employer match that, I had been free to invest the same funds.

Alan Wolfson
Bradenton, Fla.

How telling it is that Mr. Gettelfinger yearns for the good old days of the 1950s and denigrates the very mechanisms that will finally free individuals and allow them to accummulate the wealth that was previously reserved for people like Mr. Gettelfinger. Trying to draw parallels between GM and Starbucks is laughable. No one born after the 1960s would ever take GM over Starbucks, either as a career path or as a stock purchase. You helped ruin GM, Mr. Gettelfinger; forgive us if we want you to keep your hands off our coffee house.

James Freeman
Portland, Maine

Bravo to Vandervoort, Wolfson and Freeman!