Northern Valley Beacon

Information, observations, and analysis from the James River valley on the Northern Plains----- E-Mail: Enter 'Beacon' in subject box. Send to: Minnekota@Referencedesk.org

Saturday, October 29, 2005

 

Just who IS responsible for health care?

Asks Nathan Newman at TPM Cafe:

When Wal-Mart's trucks break down, no one expects the government to pay to repair them. Wal-Mart pays to fix them and the costs are included in the price of the goods they sell.

Yet moderate Democrats apparently think that when workers get sick, companies don't have the responsibility to "repair" their workers. The new talking points from think tank Washington -- echoing what Ezra says -- is that it's not Wal-Mart's responsibility to take care of sick workers:
The controversy over Wal-Mart's benefits may mask what some experts see as an unraveling of the employer-based system of health coverage. "These are indications of the gaps in the health care system that are exposed by Wal-Mart," said Len Nichols, a health economist at the New America Foundation, an independent public policy group in Washington. "You can't blame Wal-Mart."

So it's nice to know that when we on the labor left mobilizing against Wal-Mart feel the knife in our back, we know who put it there.

Click the link to read the whole story by Nathan Newman.

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