CAP, Wal-Mart, SEIU Join Forces in Support of Employer Mandate
The Center for American Progress, the Service Employees International Union, and Wal-Mart joined forces today to release a letter (PDF) endorsing the dual ideas of an employer mandate to provide health insurance and “triggers” to automatically reduce costs if health care spending gets too high (more on that here). You can find details on policy courtesy of my man Igor Volsky. And as Jeff Young notes, there’s important politics here:
The so-called employer mandate is adamantly opposed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Business and virtually every major business trade association in Washington. But the backing of Wal-Mart, which employs about 2 million people, could give a big boost to President Obama and Congress’s effort to levy such a requirement on companies. [...] The decision by Wal-Mart to break away from the Chamber and its ilk marks the first visible crack in the business coalition on healthcare reform.
The highly ideological behavior of the business community, and high degree of class solidarity exhibited by the executive class, has been a hugely important element of the story of American politics over the past thirty years or so. The willingness of much of the business community to break with Chamber ideology on Waxman-Markey and now on health care is an important sign of change in the air.
31 Responses to “CAP, Wal-Mart, SEIU Join Forces in Support of Employer Mandate”
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June 30th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Actually, Walmart gains from an employer mandate because it levels the playing field for health care and makes Walmart’s economies of scale and sub-living wages drive their costs lower than their competitors.
I am happy they are onboard with this, but the real news would be Walmart supporting EFCA. Union YES!
June 30th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
So does this mean Wal-Mart is no longer evil?
Maybe Wal-Mart thinks it will be in a better position than their smaller competitors to comply with an employer mandate, thus providing it with a competitive advantage.
June 30th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
This has to be the first time that CAP and Wal-Mart have signed on to the same letter ever, right?
June 30th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
This is a smart move by Wal-Mart that will destroy more small businesses if it succeeds.
June 30th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
a regular popular front !
June 30th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
More SEIU empire-building. Ave Andy Stern!
June 30th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Can anyone trust the numbers in the letter or the facts? Let’s try and figure that out. Almost a week after MattY promoted this page and I pointed out that it contains a major lie involving almost 10 million people, the major lie is still on that page.
If you don’t spot the major lie immediatedly see this.
If CAP is willing to lie to you about an issue involving 10 million people, what else are they – and their new friends – lying about?
June 30th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
“This has to be the first time that CAP and Wal-Mart have signed on to the same letter ever, right?”
Forget CAP… Wal-Mart and the SEIU???
June 30th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
I don’t understand why many large businesses aren’t on board with an employer mandate. Virtually all large businesses already provide health care, so the only thing an amployer mandate does is provide another barrier to entry protecting large businesses’ privileged position.
Good to see CAP and SIEU join together to protect large businesses like Walmart against competition from small business.
June 30th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
The highly ideological behavior of the business community, and high degree of class solidarity exhibited by the executive class, has been a hugely important element of the story of American politics over the past thirty years or so.
There is a very good, and very much justified, reason for that. It’s Johnson, and later presidents until Reagan, riding roughshod over pragmatic, stable, and reasonable economic policies. The Great Society, for example, was prima facie programmatic insanity.
It got so bad that at the end of the 70’s, the later part of the Carter era, entire business groups stopped being viable because of bloated costs that were impossible to rein in due to external constraints. That’s in fact the whole genesis of the whole buyout booms by private equity starting from the late 70’s (the first major deal of KKR was something like 1977).
June 30th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
It was so bad at one point that every single Safeway in the country, in the early 80’s, was paying nearly double the prevailing wages in the industry, creating a huge disequilibrium in the market. The Magowans sold out to KKR and it was KKR that finally turned the company back around to profitability.
That was the sort of insanity that prompted business executives as a group to become severely frightened of statism in all forms.
June 30th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Big business using it’s stooges running the State to crush it’s small business competition! Well done Walmart!
June 30th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Where is the public option here? A mandate and a trigger are not what we’re demanding.
We want single-payer, and are willing to accept a robust public option. Anything short of that is worse than no bill. I certainly don’t want mandatory private health care insurance. I want affordable health care.
June 30th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
It would be very advantageous for US business if health insurance were made a societal cost rather that a cost of doing business.
The fact that GM paid more for health insurance than steel is a huge cost disadvantage.
June 30th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
You are so naive about SEIU.
June 30th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
Why do we want to encourage people to get their coverage from their employers? Isn’t losing health care when people lose their jobs one of the huge problems we’re seeing during this recession? I had been under the impression that the goal was single payer – or at least the progressive goal.
June 30th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
Wal-Mart has two reasons to support the employer mandate:
1) Competitive advantage. Wal-Mart is large enough to negotiate advantageous rates for its employees’ coverage, an advantage its smaller competitors don’t enjoy.
2) Political advantage. By accepting the employer mandate, Wal-Mart scores political points it can use to fend off EFCA and other policies that would adversely affect its dominant market position.
It’s not an alliance, merely mutual self-interest.
June 30th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
That was the sort of insanity that prompted business executives as a group to become severely frightened of statism in all forms.
Except for the legal protections for corporations, the bailouts, the intellectual monopoly laws, the government manipulation of the money supply, the import quotas, the duties, the tariffs, the subsidies, etc.
June 30th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
LOL at Matt Yglesias. You got schooled.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/What–49538182.html
“This is, of course, absurd. Wal-Mart’s support for this regulation is new, but times have not changed. Wal-Mart, remember, joined labor unions in lobbying for a hike in the minimum wage, and a Wal-Mart executive testified before Congress in favor of cap-and-trade years ago.
And “The highly ideological behavior of the business community”? What in the world is Yglesias talking about? The Chamber of Commerce’s endorsement of Obama’s stimulus plan? Or the fact that Barney Frank scored higher on the Chamber’s score card than did Ron Paul?”
June 30th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
[...] Mandates Given Boost Wal-Mart supports the employer mandate as part of health reform. It baffles me that business has not been a stronger [...]
June 30th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Walmart’s motive may not be what many think here. Its competitors these days are primarily other large box stores (Target, CostCo), large grocery chains (Safeway, Publix, Krogers, etc.), and various speciality retail chains (Home Depot, Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, etc.) These stores are just as likely, more or less, to offer health insurance as Walmart. But recall that Walmart is entering directly into the healthcare provider market with their “cheap” clinics. Those clinics would not need to be as cheap, and would be more profitable, with universal health coverage.
June 30th, 2009 at 9:39 pm
You know, if you actually read what you wrote, this wouldn’t be a surprise. Wal-Mart is backing an automatic lowering of health care costs to them, with the full force of government, if they get “too expensive”.
From their perspective, what’s not to like? From yours, are you operating under some weird delusion that cutting the costs associated with health care will result in better care?
If so, then let’s go after “waste, fraud, and abuse” in federal programs – because you should believe in our ability to root that out, too.
Good luck with that – I hope you find a pony while you’re at it
June 30th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
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July 1st, 2009 at 1:43 am
When I hear the phrase “trigger mechanism” I reach for my revolver.
July 1st, 2009 at 9:20 am
So the plan will start with the trigger pulled retroactively to 1990?
July 1st, 2009 at 10:52 am
[...] on applauding Wal-Mart’s sudden embrace of an employer mandate to provide health insurance, CAP, Wal-Mart, SEIU Join Forces in Support of Employer Mandate. Here’s why, Wal-Mart Supports Health Plan That Will Destroy Small Businesses Sorry Matt! We [...]
July 1st, 2009 at 3:15 pm
[...] Matthew Yglesias: The highly ideological behavior of the business community, and high degree of class solidarity exhibited by the executive class, has been a hugely important element of the story of American politics over the past thirty years or so. The willingness of much of the business community to break with Chamber ideology on Waxman-Markey and now on health care is an important sign of change in the air. [...]
July 1st, 2009 at 7:22 pm
SEIU?
Don’t they have links to ACORN?
Wal-Mart don’t get in bed with the devil once you are in you are trapped like a slave.
You still have a chance take the red pill Wal-Mart and I will show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
July 2nd, 2009 at 8:44 am
[...] had given, say, the Cato Institute somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million, after which Cato issued a joint letter with Walmart executives calling for the federal government to pass new policies that would hurt Walmart’s [...]
July 2nd, 2009 at 9:04 am
This of course has nothing to do with (1) the $500K-plus that Wal-Mart gives CAP (on CAP’s part), or (2) the smaller-business-crushing effect that the mandate will have if adopted (on Wal-Mart’s). It’s all about stepping up for the American worker.
July 2nd, 2009 at 10:00 am
Big business loves regulation, especially regulation that they help craft. They can live with it, while it severely hurts the smaller competition, setting up yet another barrier to entry into these markets.
Wal-mart as a company is amoral, like almost any company out there. They do their fiduciary duties as a public company, which is loosely defined as “what’s best for the bottom line”. It’s unfortunate that companies in this country can make use of the government and a cadre of useful idiots to expand that bottom line…