Detroit, Autoworkers, and Health Insurance

The excellent Xavier and Peter at Pibbshow bring us this:

From the New York Times:

The reason comes down to simple self-interest. The United Auto Workers is one of the few private-sector unions that doesn't run its own health plan. Rather, most have created huge companies to administer their workers' plans, giving them a large and often corrupt stake in the current system...Despite shrinking membership, organized labor still has enough money and muscle to get behind a campaign for national health insurance. Last month, public-sector unions in California came up with tens of millions of dollars in a successful campaign to defeat a ballot measure that challenged their right to use union dues for political purposes. The problem is getting American unions to fight for common concerns as opposed to narrow institutional interests. It may just be that a broad-scale union overhaul will have to precede one in American health care.

Now you see why American cars cost so much.