Jim Devine wrote:
>[*] Any _true_ improvement in efficiency could benefit everyone --
>including Wal-Mart -- without hurting anyone.
-Well, that's not true. There's a huge private insurance industry that stands -to lose a great deal. Also, Walmart and any other employer that offers even shitty, expensive -health coverage loses the ability to use health care as a club to keep their -employees in line and in fear of losing their job. I think this would benefit from -more 'class against class' analysis, not less.
Yeah-- the whole technocratic idea that there is some kind of "everyone wins" from single payer rhetoric is abstracting health care policy from the broader assault on workers rights that health care is only a component.
Employers don't want a uniform health care system; they like a system where some workers have no health care, since that's the "club" as Jenny notes that is used to cut wages and other benefits for workers with a union contract. One reason unions are supporting fair share legislation like the New York and Massachusetts bills is to remove that club. And the reason most "good" employers don't rush to sign up, even though they would theoretically benefit from imposing similar costs on their competitors, is that they know they would lose that pressure on employees.
Those promoting "fair share" legislation use cross-class rhetoric around benefitting high-road employers, but unlike, apparently, the single payer folks, we aren't fooling ourselves that most businesses are really looking for such win-win results. Employers will support single payer only when the employer mandates are so stringent that they lose the club against employees and the rationality and costs savings of single payer are more attractive than the wage-cutting discipline of the present system.
Nathan Newman