Removing context to make a selective argument is intellectually dishonest.
The article contrasts the operating environment of “Big Three” auto-manufacturers across countries. It compares manufacture costs in Germany and Japan with those in the US, and the paragraph you cite links through to a (2004) article in which it is estimated that pensions and health insurance combined add $1,784 to the cost of a car in the US.
You need to subtract some contradictory numbers in the article to come to a number you can ascribe to health insurance, but somewhere between $400 and $800 fits a quoted “$900 will flow to [pension] funds”.
Given this context it is reasonable to argue that General Motors is (or at least was in 2004) at a competitive disadvantage to manufacturers in Japan or Germany as a result of the US having no universal healthcare system.
Lamentably for your position, just because there are political decisions involved that bring about consequences, factual discussion of those consequences is not itself necessarily political.
> Given this context it is reasonable to argue that General Motors is (or at least was in 2004) at a competitive disadvantage to manufacturers in Japan or Germany as a result of the US having no universal healthcare system.
Japanese and German carmakers also make cars in the US. The primary distinction isn't that the company has to provide healthcare, which they all do, and even if they were manufacturing in different countries they still would because someone would have to pay the taxes that pay for healthcare instead of the insurance premiums. The primary distinction is that foreign automakers have non-union shops in the South whereas domestic automakers have union shops in and around Detroit, and management discovered that promising generous future benefits is a way to placate the UAW without cutting into present-day profits, with rather deleterious consequences for the company's future.
This still has nothing to do with the healthcare system except insofar as it was a category of future benefit that could be promised. The same thing would have happened (and did) by promising future pension payments or other benefits. The proportionality of healthcare vs. pension payments and other benefits wouldn't have materially affected the result, they'd have just been promised more of something else.
The article contrasts the operating environment of “Big Three” auto-manufacturers across countries. It compares manufacture costs in Germany and Japan with those in the US, and the paragraph you cite links through to a (2004) article in which it is estimated that pensions and health insurance combined add $1,784 to the cost of a car in the US.
You need to subtract some contradictory numbers in the article to come to a number you can ascribe to health insurance, but somewhere between $400 and $800 fits a quoted “$900 will flow to [pension] funds”.
Given this context it is reasonable to argue that General Motors is (or at least was in 2004) at a competitive disadvantage to manufacturers in Japan or Germany as a result of the US having no universal healthcare system.
Lamentably for your position, just because there are political decisions involved that bring about consequences, factual discussion of those consequences is not itself necessarily political.