Wal-Mart and a union to seek universal health coverage: Now what? wal_mart

Wal-Mart Stores and the Service Employees International Union agreed at a Feb. 7 meeting on a series of goals for achieving universal health coverage, The New York Times reported, citing as its sources “people briefed on the matter.”

The meeting between H. Lee Scott Jr., the chief executive of Wal-Mart, and Andrew L. Stern, president of the S.E.I.U., which capped months of secret conversations, could be the beginning, however tentative, of a détente between the nation’s largest employer and its labor critics, The Times noted.

Wal-Mart, which insures fewer than half its workers, has identified health care as potentially the biggest vulnerability to its image and business, and the S.E.I.U., one of the country’s biggest unions, has called it the No. 1 priority for its members.

During the meeting, Stern and Scott announced a campaign to seek public acceptance of several principles of health policy. One goal is universal health coverage by a specific date, somewhere around 2012, according to The Times. Another is the idea of shared responsibility, emphasizing that individuals, businesses and government all play roles in financing health care and expanding coverage.

Executives from AT& T, Intel and several nonprofit organizations also participated in the meeting, according to The Times.

The National Association of Convenience Stores has in recent years supported Association Health Plan legislation. An AHP is an arrangement where a group of small employers join together through a bona fide association to purchase or provide health insurance coverage for their employees. According to NACS, AHPs would:

  1. Reduce costs through greater economies of scale to spread costs and risk,
  2. Increase group bargaining power with large insurance companies,
  3. Give small businesses greater administrative efficiencies,
  4. Provide a uniform regulatory structure, and
  5. Generate more insurance options for small businesses.
AHPs would provide small businesses the opportunity to band together through a bona fide association, like NACS, to purchase affordable health benefits, the association has said. By joining together, smaller retailers in the c-store industry would enjoy greater bargaining power and therefore lower the employers' costs and receive more favorable treatment from insurers. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the average savings would be at least 9 percent and could be as much as 25 percent per employer.

The U.S. Department of Labor would administer AHPs, just as it independently regulates self-insured health plans providing benefits to approximately 72 million U.S. workers, retirees and their families under current law.