Businesses at risk from health reform, or status quo, depending on source

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Employment Policies Institute and other friends of business have joined to launch a national television ad campaign, beginning Thursday, that will warn against the health care overhaul, The Boston Globe reports. The $10 million ad blitz "features June O'Neill, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, arguing that the bill would deepen the national debt and hurt job creation." The ads will air on Fox News, CNN and CNBC (Rhee, 10/11).

Meanwhile, speaking to potential donors at an AIDS charity function Wednesday, Bill Clinton said that American businesses - such as General Motors - are being crushed by health care costs even without reform, Bloomberg reports. The American system for financing and delivering health services makes U.S. companies uncompetitive with counterparts abroad, he said. "One of the things that killed them was General Motors had $1,500 a car in health-care costs and Toyota had $110," he said (McCormick, 11/11).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.