So on August 1, Doba is switching from Blue Cross (who we’ve been with since starting the company in 2002) to IHC. Blue Cross wanted to raise our plan costs up 17%. It’s been about that much each year since we started. By switching to IHC, we get some better covereage in Utah County with hospitals for the majority of our employees, and we only increase our rates from last year 7%.

Do you know of any other part of business where your costs can consistently go up by double-digit rates year over year? It’s actually pretty crazy.

Fresh off of our insurance meeting with IHC and our broker this past Tuesday I came across this article today: U.S. still flunks health care test, report finds

The Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation, created a 100-point scorecard using 37 indicators such as health outcomes, quality, access and efficiency. We scored dead last out of 19 industrialized nations. Dead last. If this were the olympics it’d be like we won no medals. There’d be a national outrage. But it’s only heathcare, something that affects every man/woman/child in this country. So most of us will only hear politicians talking about garbage and doing nothing.

We spend more on health care than any of these countries. 7.5% of our total costs in the health care system are administrative costs. Places like Finland spend 1.9% on administration. Yet they beat us badly on over 37 indicators. Think having a baby in the U.S. is a good idea? We have 7 infant deaths out of 1000 compared to 2.8 in Japan and 3.1 in Sweden. Yet again, we spend more on health care proportionate to our population than all these countries.

Hum, we spend more and are dead last in the rankings. Sounds like to me we ought to put some people in the room with a whiteboard and write down all the ways these countries provide/manage health care (all 18 of them that beat us) and ‘borrow’ some ideas from them. Shoot, just plain lift their systems and make the switch.

This is government and buracrecy AND private enterprise all gone wrong and awry and failing the American public.

We’re dead last and Doba and our employees pay 17% more each year. Ridiculous.

I’m sorry, but IMHO I just think that in today’s modern and global economy labor unions are about as worthless as you know what on a boar hog.

The UAW (The International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America) started a strike against GM yesterday afternoon.

From the release on the UAW website:

UAW workers went on strike against General Motors over job security, economic issues, benefits for active workers and winning investment in future products

Job security? Is it GM’s mandate to guarantee you a job? To guarantee you pensions and medical benefits until you die? Maybe we should do what France does, seems to work well there: no one gets hired because they can’t get fired and unemployment is like at 25% in certain age groups. Economic issues? When did it become GM’s job to address economic issues? Isn’t that a Macro issue that no one company can be expected to let alone predict, but manage? Winning investment in future products? Let me get this right, the union is trying to tell GM through a strike that they need to investment in winning products? You don’t think that the leadership of GM wants that? Good hell.

The UAW president, Ron Gettelfinger, also said these nuggets from at a press conference yesterday:

“We’ve met and solved all of GM’s problems since 2003.”

“We’ve done a lot of things to help THAT company.” (emphasis and all caps mine)

Look, when you get into this type of deal, you should just shut GM down. Has GM’s turnaround been helped by their employees? Sure. Has it been damn good leadership and strategy and management? Yes. Did the Union solve all of GM’s problems? Far from it; create a lot of the problems more like it.

I know that Gettelfinger is not an employee, but I watched the interviews on the news this morning with several GM employees and they all have an US versus THEM relationship: it’s THAT company, not OUR company. My $0.02: Shut GM down and start over with employees that aren’t unionized, that care about total success of the company, and that quite bitching and moaning about what they don’t have and just get back to work.

I’ll end my rant with this. Not only are unions useless, but I’ll go on record and make a little prediction. Any company that has a significant portion of their workforce unionized is doomed. The massive acceleration of globalization combined with domestic problems such as a completely derailed and broken health are system, a culture of entitlement, and a citizenry in America not taking any responsibility for their own future and economic wellbeing will cause unions to try and do what their mission is (Good Jobs. Good Communities. - that’s the UAW mission) and they will be an Achilles heal for these companies. The companies will be paralyzed, they won’t be able to adapt to macro changes, and they will get their you know what handed to them by competitors–a good number of them that live and exist by a different set of rules most likely in a different country than the blessed U.S. of A.