[AnthonyMouse]

> Given this context it is reasonable to argue that General Motors is (or at least was in 2004) at a competitive disadvantage to manufacturers in Japan or Germany as a result of the US having no universal healthcare system.

Japanese and German carmakers also make cars in the US. The primary distinction isn't that the company has to provide healthcare, which they all do, and even if they were manufacturing in different countries they still would because someone would have to pay the taxes that pay for healthcare instead of the insurance premiums. The primary distinction is that foreign automakers have non-union shops in the South whereas domestic automakers have union shops in and around Detroit, and management discovered that promising generous future benefits is a way to placate the UAW without cutting into present-day profits, with rather deleterious consequences for the company's future.

This still has nothing to do with the healthcare system except insofar as it was a category of future benefit that could be promised. The same thing would have happened (and did) by promising future pension payments or other benefits. The proportionality of healthcare vs. pension payments and other benefits wouldn't have materially affected the result, they'd have just been promised more of something else.