According to Tim Noah, American employers face an undue burden when required to provide health insurance for their employees. However, employees also face a burden: that of lower wages than they would be making if their employer didn't have to provide health insurance.

In fact, economic equations (use the elasticity of labor supply in the United States in relation to wage, look at income and substitution effects) demonstrate that in many cases, a large proportion of the employer's health insurance costs are passed on to American workers because the average employee won't reduce the number of hours worked because of this implicitly lower wage. (The real reason GM is upset might be because even this implicitly lower wage is pretty high compared to the costs of operation in another country with labor laws that are more favorable to corporations.)

On the other hand, the cost of universal health care comes directly (and visibly!) out of our taxes. The bottom line: American workers are paying for this system. We always have, and we always will. We will pay more if corporations don't chip in at all. But the problems that plague medical care won't go away. Delayed care and incompetence plague these nations as well (along with extremely high income taxes).

Moore might have visited France, England and Cuba, but he couldn't have spoken with yet another leader who provided medical care for all citizens - Saddam Hussein. Obviously, no system is perfect, and I'm not advocating indecision. But before taking the plunge into European living, we have to ask: will trading lower wages for higher taxes bring about a better system?

You said, we pay for it either way. So why not pay for a system designed for us: socialized medicine.

The better question is "why not pay for an efficient system versus an inefficient one".

I don't really understand, are you saying that lower wages is an unaviodable occurence if we socialize healthcare? Is this true in other countries that have a socialized system? Does an employee in a foerign company who lets say works for a car manufacturer have a lower wage then someone in America who holds the same type of position, and furthermore is there an equation that can prove this statement? Could it be that trading your extra income for socialized healthcare actually be more economically effecient anyway? I think that is the real issue.