Wal-Mart CEO to Governors: Don't Force Us to Provide Healthcare

Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott, Jr., addressed the nations Governors last week and pleaded with them to not pass legislation aimed at forcing Wal-Mart to provide better health care to its workers. More than 20 states are currently considering such legislation.

I hope the states do not back down. There is a far bigger issue than Wal-Mart here; Wal-Mart is just the poster child for what is wrong with the nation's healthcare system. What is wrong is that no one wants to take responsibility for providing economical and just healthcare in the country. Once, big companies did that for their workers. It didn't help everyone and coverage varied from company to company, but a solid core of America's families had good health care and benefits.

Those days are gone in the global economy. Companies can't, or won't, provide generous benefits because they are competing with companies around the world who pay lower wages and provide fewer benefits. And no one has learned how to compete in this world stage better than Wal-Mart. They have become the largest employer in the country and one of the world's most profitable companies by not paying their employees well and by not providing them with good benefits. And in order to compete, they have forced other companies to do the same. (And I know this over-simplifies the issue. Wal-Mart is a service company, not a manufacturing company. Service companies typically pay lower wages.)

What is lost on most American's, especially the one's who talk about the wonderful benefits of the free market, is that most of the countries we "compete" with provide free, or nearly free, government subsidized healthcare to their citizens. And the only just and economically viable solution in our country is for us to do the same. The cost of healthcare, and the ability to negotiate prices for drugs and services, needs to be born by the nation's taxpayers so that everyone pays a fair share, and so that everyone in the country has access to healthcare.

Wal-Mart can't solve this problem. And I for one, do not think the answer is for Wal-Mart to become like General Motors. But Wal-Mart's political clout is enormous. And we need them, and other companies like them, to feel the heat until they see the light. The fact that Wal-Mart's CEO feels the need to address the nation's governors on this issue tells me that we are moving in the right direction. We need every state in the union to go after Wal-Mart.