The Alta Californian

Wal-Mart, Intel and AT&T recently announced that they are joining the Service Employees International Union, America’s largest labor union, to promote universal health coverage. While the Wall Street Journal may think this an “unlikely coalition,” anyone who understands government subsidy
will see what these large companies stand to gain.

Government-provided (or at least subsidized) universal health coverage will result in a huge cost-savings to these large companies, especially Wal-Mart, which employs 1.39 million people, 57% of whom are not covered by the company health plan. Why pay for approximately 800,000 employees to have health care when you can lobby the federal government to cover it for you?

Other large companies like AT&T (190,000 employees) and Intel (100,000 employees), which do provide health benefits, also have an interest in reducing their costs through government subsidy. Acting now allows these companies to take advantage of the popular universal health care movement that already exists, thus saving even the cost of lobbying.

Even though they pay lip service to private responsibility, it is clear from their statement that this is simply a call for socialized medicine:

“We believe that businesses, governments, and individuals all should contribute to managing and financing a new American health care system.” [my emphasis][1]

Calling for business, government, and individuals to contribute is nice way of de-emphasizing the fact that the only change they are advocating is the addition of government. Their only motive for getting government involved is to pass the costs to other people.

Saving money is not the only thing these companies expect to gain — they also expect to free themselves from the smear campaigns of labor activists. If the federal government provides health care, then employers are absolved of any supposed responsibility to provide it themselves. No longer will labor activists be able to smear them publicly, at least on the point of health care. But, this is wishful thinking — labor activists will have plenty to complain about, such as the quality and inequality of health care.

We will see growing support for universal health care amongst large companies simply because they expect to profit from it. The costs for such a program will be passed on to all of us through taxes, inflation from increased deficit spending, or simply though long waiting lists for health services.

[1] Press Release