By Dave LIndorff

All you need to really know about the Obama health “reform” initiative is that it is being supported by retail giant Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart, a corporation that was built on the philosophy of treating
workers like dirt (the company famously locks its employees inside its
buildings at night, forces workers who have checked out of their shifts
to continue to serve customers, off the clock, if they are asked for
help on their way out of the store, has bitterly resisted offering any
health benefits, and has one of the worst records of labor law
violations of any company in the country), is now signing on as an
endorser of the Obama health reform effort, saying:

“We believe now is the time for action on this vital issue. We
commend the leadership of elected officials who are committed to
enactment of reform, and we appreciate the commitment to inclusion and
transparency which has been present thus far.

“We are entering a critical time during which all of us who will
be asked to pay for health care reform will have to make a choice on
whether to support the legislation. This choice will require employers
to consider the trade off of agreeing to a coverage mandate and
additional taxes versus the promise of reduced health care cost
increases.”

Why would a company like Wal-Mart, with its Paleolithic attitude
towards its own workers, be supporting a plan that, at least
ostensibly, claims to be trying to provide health coverage for the
working poor?

There are several answers. First of all, from a competitive point of
view, Wal-Mart probably figures that if there is an employer mandate to
provide health benefits, with a hefty fine for those that refuse to
comply, the company is in a better position to provide a minimal plan
than many of its competitors, like K-Mart or Target. Second, the
company’s executives may figure that the so-called “public option” will
offer it a cheaper alternative, subsidized by the taxpayer, than
existing private insurance plans. This is one valid point of attack
from the right on the Obama plan: that a government-run alternative to
private insurance would end up being a dumping ground for companies
that didn’t want to pay for private insurance coverage plans for their
workers.

Finally, Wal-Mart probably figures that the Obama plan is the best
way to avoid a move to a single-payer system ala Canada’s, which
inevitably would be heavily financed by corporate taxes.

There are few giant corporations in America that are worse than
Wal-Mart when it comes to employee relations and treatment of workers,
so when you see a company like that coming out in support of any
government program—particularly one that is as critically important to
the lives of ordinary working people as health care—you should
immediately question the value and the intent of that plan.

The same point can be made about the so called “savings” being
offered by various segments of the medical-industrial complex in deals
being struck with and touted by the White House (the pharmaceutical
industry has promised to cut drug costs to the government and the
public by $80 billion over 10 years, while the hospital industry has
agreed to offer savings of another $150 billion over the same period).
While these so-called savings are mostly bogus sleight-of-hands (for
example, much of the “savings” being offered by the hospital industry
consists of reduced government compensation for the treatment of the
uninsured in emergency rooms, but of course, if the Obama plan is
passed, and insurance coverage is offered to most Americans, there
would be far fewer uninsured patients in hospitals anyway), the real
reason these big industry sectors are coming on board the Obama plan is
that they see it as a way to avoid, or push off to the future, a
single-payer system that would dictate all their fees and prices.

The point is, if the very groups that have created the massively
expensive and exclusionary health care system that we have today in
America, and that for years have bitterly resisted any efforts to
seriously reform it and to make it open to all, regardless of income or
medical condition, are suddenly endorsing a plan that purports to be a
real, progressive reform, we have to question the premise: that the
reform really is real or progressive.

And the plan being promoted by President Obama and by the Democrats
in Congress is not real or progressive. It is a plan that will further
enrich the health care industry, that will not stop the continuing rise
in health care costs, that will still leave millions of people without
access to quality medical care, and that will end up costing taxpayers
more than they are already paying.

The proof is the support for this plan being offered by the likes of Wal-Mart and the big medical industry players.
_________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. He is author of
"Marketplace Medicine: The Rise of the For-Profit Hospital Chains"
(Bantam Books, 1992) and most recently of "The Case for Impeachment"
(St. Martin's Press, 2006). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net