WASHINGTON INSIGHT

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS: Those same congressional Democrats, who also are pushing for health care legislation this year, believe they have found a valuable, albeit unlikely, ally: American business. . . . Experts who addressed the House Democrats’ issues conference said that U.S. businesses are bearing an increasingly heavy load of health insurance payments that adds significantly to their cost of production. Foreign competitors, however, are freed of this cost because Germany, Japan and every other industrialized nation but South Africa has a government health program that is financed by taxes but not directly by business. . . . Says economist Lester Thurow: “The world economy is going to blow up the American health care system. . . . American companies can’t afford it anymore . . . they have to get out of the health care business.” If the system is not changed, Thurow said, U.S. firms will shift production overseas to avoid the increasingly onerous burden of providing employees with private health insurance.