Feedback: Wal-Mart and Healthare
Wednesday, December 14, 2005 - 11:14 AM
Subject: walmart
One of the more disturbing aspects of the Wal-Mart health care policy is the fact that the Walton Family has a net work of over $70 billion dollars (according to Forbes). What would Wal-Mart’s health care policy look like if the Walton's were willing to give up $1 billion or $2 billion of those $70b and give it back to their workers? What impact could this amount of money make on the lives of their thousands of employees?
-MM
Subject: the health insurance discussion
Two things that need a bit of reflection:
(1) in the comparison of the usa to europe you cannot think only about comparing health care costs. if you add the higher taxes and the lower rate of corporate welfare in europe, it becomes less clear why american corporations are complaining.
(2) we, the citizens of this country are not CONSUMERS of health care. Health care, and education should not be treated as products. We are not consumers when we call the police or the fire department, nor when people are send to fight wars for us. All of these services (and i might add to it appropriate housing) are a part of what a government should provide to its citizens. And if it costs more money, everybody should pay more taxes, and those who do not need to think about it should pay much more. It is hard to believe that those at the top will spend much less (at least in the us) if they have a bit less. Needless to say taxes money isn't money that is out of the market, it gets back there through slightly different channels.
-OG
(no subject)
In your eagerness to expand the discussion to national health care issues, you did not read the memo carefully or address aspects of it that were not already well-worn topics -- beginning with the single payer issue. The cardiologist who talked about "life style" was getting at something, but you didn't pick up. Wal-Mart is not talking about all of us; it is talking about poor people and how they live in this country. Wal-Mart is also trying to invent an American workforce that is as underpaid and disadvantaged as those in SE Asia. Where was any of this in your review of the usual suspects?
-AC
Subject: health care
I have a hard time finding anything wrong with the Walmart Document. Imagine for a moment how the landscape would look if employers had slowed or stopped their practice of offering health care coverage years ago. By now the crushing weight of a single payer system would have created the political will necessary to get us all universal coverage.
The thing I really have a difficult time understanding is why this isn't a republican issue. I'm mystified that making our workforce the healthiest in the world (and therefore costing employers fewer health care dollars and fewer sick days) isn't at least as important as the unemployment figures.
-BR
And the last word goes to our guest on the program, Professor Cindy Watts:
The issues of the kind of delivery system we have and who is in charge are critical to all the points made this morning by your callers (interesting to hear the different average perspective from those who call in to NPR programs in Seattle!). The landscape is clearly different now than it was in the 70's when providers and consumers got pretty much whatever they wanted and the 90's when managed care ruled the market. In my mind, most everything worth thinking about fits into a frame that someone else has already created -- often a musical frame. I have attached my version of health care history to the tune of "Santa Baby."
I hope you enjoy it.
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