Today June 21, 2009
Meet The Press had Nina Easton the Washington Bureau Chief for Fortune magazine on as guest.They were discussing President Obama’s health care reform agenda when she said the following
MS. EASTON: …on every front with these big, broad, sweeping proposals, and it’s coming back to haunt them now. And I think the, the big speed bump this week, of course, was that CBO, Congressional Budget Office study that said that the costs of a public plan are going to be well beyond what they expected. later in the discussion
Later in the conversation she said ….
MS. EASTON: Which was this–healthcare reform depends on the president looking people in the eye and saying, “Your plan’s not going to change.” And again, going back to that CBO study, showed that 16 to 23 million people would lose their private or other type of health insurance if that public plan went through. So that’s something else in terms of details that’s going to be a problem on healthcare. But the deficit is the other–deficit and spending are two things that probably, you know, the concern over I think probably has some Republicans quietly smiling this week.
The CBO’s analysis of the HELP committee’s health care reform legislation did not include the public plan because it was not in the bill the senate submitted.Yet Ms. Easton falsely assigns two attributes of the CBO report to the public plan.She claims that the public plan resulted in the unexpected cost of the legislation and the projected shift from employer based coverage to private insurance purchased in the proposed national health insurance exchange. Ms. Easton missed or ignored these facts to a disturbing degree.The shows host Mr.Gregory failed to correct Ms. Easton.This pattern of lies and distortions which unfairly malign the public option is becoming the modus operandi of the mainstream media’s health care reform coverage.
“losing their plan” because they either lose their job or their private employer opts not to continue subsidizing the plan. Correct me if I’m wrong, but cutting health benefits seems to be a popular cost-reduction strategy among employers these days.
would have been too partisan for m.t.p.!
I assumed that a corporation would love to have a public option thus relieving it of having to cover its employees. On a related note, I believe it was last week on This Week with George Stephanopoulos where he had a roundtable to discuss healthcare, which as far as I could tell included no strong voice for public coverage.
I checked their 2008 annual report…
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p>SEGMENT PROFIT in millions
Energy Infrastructure $6,080
Technology Infrastructure $8,152
NBC Universal $3,131
Capital Finance $8,632
Consumer & Industrial $365
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p>Now, a few observations:
1. Consumer and Ind missed their mark this year big time. In 2007 they made $1,034MM in profit. Capital finance profit was off almost $4000MM.
2. GE’s medical devices seem to be part of Technology Infrastructure, which was 31% of their profit.
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p>So, what is included within Technology Infrastructure?
* jet engines
* aircraft parts
* aerospace systems
* medical imaging
* medical devices
* medical services (IT related stuff)
* locomotives
* wind turbine parts
* railway signaling equipment
* fire detection systems
* factory automation equipment
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p>Now, how much of that is medical? I don’t know. I do know that the two parts that seemed to get the most attention within Technology Infrastructure were jet engines and medical imaging.
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p>So, methinks that medical makes up a sizeable fraction of 31% of their profit, but certainly not 50% of the 31%. At an upper bound, 50% of 31% is 15.5% — large enough to make GE care about it, but certainly not essential to GE’s survival.
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p>Additionally, it’s not clear that GE would lose out with Medicare-for-all. After all, that’s 44 million more people who will need X-rays, PET scans, CAT scans, MRIs, etc. It’s also extremely likely that the Feds will hire GE (and a number of other contractors) to do IT. So, GE will lose some customers, but they’ll gain some too. It’s certainly not the case that 15.5% (upper bound) of their profits will simply evaporate — GE makes products which add actual value to health care. As for taxes and expenses, they’ll possibly have to pay more taxes, but it might be that they’ll find significant savings on the benefits they pay all their employees, those in Technology Infrastructure, Energy Infrastructure, NBC Universal, Capital Finance, and Consumer & Industrial divisions.
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p>In short, it’s not obvious if Medicare-for-all or some other national program will benefit or harm the profits of GE to any significant degree. It’s even less obvious if GE has taken a public stance on the issue.
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p>Full disclosure: I own approx 500 shares of GE stock through direct and indirect means.
… is also a problem. In addition to commenting on Easton’s errors, Ezra notes: