The LA Times is running a story on Wal-Mart having written a letter to President Obama in support of his healthcare reform policies.
It may surprise people that Wal-Mart wants government healthcare ala Canada in the United States, but it’s actually something they have every reason to care about for a number of reasons if you look at the facts.
Fact – Wal-Mart does not provide significant health insurance options to the bulk of its workforce, nearly two-thirds of Wal-Mart employees are totally uninsured.
Fact – Wal-Mart has been caught in the past trying to abuse low income health insurance plans ran by various state agencies by passing out literature and advice to their employees about how to get on these programs.
Fact – Wal-Mart hates labor unions and has broken the law numerous times to evade them. An employee with no health insurance is an employee who is a prime target for union organizers.
Fact – The employees of Wal-Mart who actually do have any substantial health insurance cost Wal-Mart a non-trivial sum of money to insure.
So a federal health insurance plan like President Obama has suggested as part of his campaigning last year is totally in line with Wal-Mart’s interests.
With the federal healthcare plan as an option, Wal-Mart can continue to offer crummy unaffordable health insurance that covers practically nothing, and all of their employees will of course opt into the federal plan which won’t cost Wal-Mart a dime. They get to redirect the employee onto the taxpayer subsidized program *and* still take the moral PR high road by not looking like they’re dumping destitute employees onto an already overloaded system meant to be a public safety net.
As another blogger said quite correctly:
“[Wal-Mart’s] employees would do better to buy one of the scam-plans that land in their email spam.”
On a similar note…
I was talking to my dentist last year after I had chipped a tooth and spent over $100 having it repaired. He said that most physicians in the United States want national healthcare because even though the government plans don’t pay quite as much, they do pay what they say they’ll pay and they sign over the check in a timely fashion. He said he was peeved at the insurance companies because his office spends a significant amount of time dealing with numerous insurance companies on a case by case basis trying to work out recurring errors, filling out their paperwork and questionnaires, and trying to collect on money that they were supposed to be paid but weren’t for whatever reason.
Clearly the health insurance cartel is happy with the status quo because they’re making out like bandits in return for providing inefficient service in return for unreasonably high premiums.
One thing is for certain, this _must_ end. The question that’s been ongoing for the better part of two decades is “WILL it end?” given the fact that the insurance company lobbyists bribe so many politicians (mostly Republicans) to kill off health reform and anti-price gouging bills before any serious proposals even end up being truly debated.
