The status quote in the USA requires that health care costs do not go away. It is a necessary evil and part of the social services that makes American great. They must be protected. Our form of government does not promote providing free health care, so this will remain a dilemma for the big three auto makers. This is seen at the highest political levels today, even the president of the US, Barack Obama admitted in January 2010, ” that failure to change the system has brought it to a breaking point.
Notwithstanding, in terms of a fiscal policy that would be impact healthcare benefits affecting comparative advantage for the big 3. I believe the burden on these firms is first of all the unionization that is a built into the work force. The union contracts are the biggest problems they faced. More importantly, I could not find a single American car that is sold world wide and made breaking record. Toyota for example according to http://whoartnow.hubpages.com/hub/Top-50-Best-Selling-Cars-Of-All-Time is noted as the “Over the last 45 years Japanese car maker Toyota have manufactured a record 32 Million Cars! Cheap to buy and cheap to run worked well for Toyota over the last 45 years, and even with all the problems with the car industry at the moment, don't expect to hear of this little record breakers reign coming to an end anytime soon.” I Could not find anything compared to this auto maker where the big three broke a similar record .
The unfortunate thing is the other auto makers are not compelled to deal with this in their overall overhead since they manufacture majority of their vehicles outside of the usa .
I would propose more aggressive programs for younger college workers, Offer early retirement packages to older retirees to take them out of the system. Slowly transition their assembly line where the least cost of most companies occurs. Research into options of opening factories in foreign nations to reduce costs. Keep patient design offices in the USA for strategic, Outsource developing parts and assembly them in the USA to reduce the health care cost. In early Dec 2009, GM eye India's auto market US and Chinese car makers hope to gain access to one of the fastest-growing markets. english.aljazeera.net/business/2009/12/2009124123455292515.html
More importantly, invest heavily into R&D take advantage of opportunity make more fuel efficient cars.
This was noticed a while back. This was noticed June 10, 2009 when “General Motors took a big step toward its reinvention as the "New G.M." today when it opened what it calls the largest automotive battery laboratory in the United States, a move the struggling company believes will hasten the development of electric vehicles” phttp://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/biztech/06/10/wired.gm.battery.lab/index.html
Notwithstanding, it will take, years before the big 3 automakers in the US can attain a comparative advantage given the current state of world economy and the fact that they are behind plus the added burden of health care cost for even retired workers.
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