Andy Stern continues to invite more strange fellows into his bed. The President of the Service Employees Union has drifted far astray from the rest of the labor movement and most sensible healthcare reformers by partnering with Wal-Mart, the Business Roundtable and other pro-business groups whose agenda is in direct opposition to ours. Their wet dream is to dump their insurance obligations on the public ledger, not to ensure that everyone can receive good medical treatment at “no cost” through public funds, funded in large part by a payroll tax on employers. “Medicare for all” must be our goal, and any proposal that leaves private insurance companies free to exploit and profit, or that places most of the burden for funding the program on the backs of taxpayers and workers who have already won health insurance from their employers through their unions is bound to fail.
Stern recently welcomed into his “unlikely alliance” the National Federation of Independent Business, the small business lobbying group that killed the last effort at achieving universal health care. This group’s number one objective is to fight any new payroll tax. They are an enemy of “Medicare for all.” Aside from the perversely exploitative profit motive of private insurance companies, which leads to medical inflation that prices too many people out of the system, the second biggest problem with our fractured health care system in the U.S. is the unfair competitive advantage that companies that shirk their responsibility to insure their employees gain over responsible companies that do. It’s Wal-Mart vs. Pathmark. Small businesses are the worst offenders in this regard. More than 60% of the 47 million people who have no health insurance in this country work for small businesses.
If all employers paid into the same insurance – Medicare – then companies like GM and Pathmark would benefit from the enlarged group plan and pay new payroll taxes that would be lower than their old premiums. Small businesses and companies like Wal-Mart would face a tax hike that would bring their total payroll closer to that of their competitors. Any proposal for a national health insurance plan that calls for a substantial income tax hike in lieu of a tax hike on employers is asking, in effect, for unionized employees and others who bargained for good health insurance in lieu of greater pay to take a pay cut in order to subsidize irresponsible businesses. This is not a matter of standing on principle and refusing to make pragmatic compromises. It’s a matter of being pragmatic in building the coalition we will need to win health care for all. Inviting the National Federation of Independent Business and the Business Roundtable – who have been and always will be opposed to a single payer health care system like “Medicare for all” – to take part in the “grand alliance” will cost any reform effort the support of regular taxpayers whose political pressure for such reform is essential. Whatever proposal comes from Stern’s coalition will be a political non-starter.