CEOs for socialized medicine.

• Author: Peters, Charles
• Position: Chief executive officer - Company earings forecast

"The Ford motor company lowered its earnings forecast for the year on Friday, citing higher gas prices and rising health care costs," reported The New York Times on April 9. In May, Standard & Poor's lowered its credit rating for Ford (and General Motors), and news reports cited the rising cost of health care for the company's present and former employees as a factor. I remember attending a press breakfast in 1992 and listening to Ford's then-CEO "Red" Poling complain that health costs were killing the company. It was already clear that the ability of American companies to compete in world markets was being hurt by the burden of health-care costs. It seemed that some form of national health insurance, financed by some means other than by employers, was inevitable. Optimism was heightened by Harris Wofford's 1990 victory in the...