Companies join to seek health insurance for all
Coalition consists of some of the nation’s largest businesses
Abandoning the business lobby’s traditional resistance to health-care reform, a new coalition of 36 major companies is launching a political campaign calling for medical insurance to be expanded to everyone along lines that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing for California.
Founded by Steve Burd, chairman of the Safeway grocery chain and an ally of the governor, the coalition could boost efforts in Sacramento and Washington to overhaul health-care laws. It also formalizes a growing division over the issue among businesses.
The coalition includes some of the nation’s largest companies: PepsiCo, General Mills, Pacific Gas and Electric Co., William Wrigley Jr. Co., Kroger Co., a number of Safeway vendors and grocery-item manufacturers such as Bumble Bee Seafoods. It also includes insurers and drug firms that probably would benefit from mandated health insurance: Aetna, Blue Shield of California, Cigna HealthCare, Eli Lilly and Co. and PacifiCare.
Such large companies already provide medical coverage to their employees and have become increasingly frustrated as premiums have increased over the years. That has made them more willing to look to the government for solutions.
But small and midsize operations, such as restaurants and retail stores that usually don’t provide coverage, have resisted wholesale changes to health-care laws. California’s Chamber of Commerce and the state’s restaurant association led the successful ballot fight in 2004 to repeal a state law requiring companies with more than 50 workers to provide insurance.
The chamber and the restaurant group are skeptical of Schwarzenegger’s proposal and those offered by Democratic legislative leaders.
Schwarzenegger’s plan would require all individuals to obtain health insurance, hospitals and doctors to subsidize insurance for the poor, and companies to spend a set amount on employee health care. The Democrats who dominate California’s Legislature have several proposals that include similar requirements for employers but do not insist that everyone get insurance.
Schwarzenegger’s proposal to insure everyone in California was influenced by Burd’s views. The governor was particularly drawn to financial incentives instituted for Safeway workers to encourage them to seek preventive care, stash money for future illnesses and address ailments such as diabetes before they become debilitating. Schwarzenegger has incorporated such ideas into his proposal.
Burd said he hopes his Coalition to Advance Healthcare Reform will help employers see that inaction would be devastating.
The coalition is the latest to form this year as lawmakers face off over a plethora of proposals to overhaul the health-care system.
AARP last week launched a television campaign to encourage state lawmakers to provide “quality, affordable health-care now.”
A number of unions, insurers and health-care providers have their own coalition to encourage action on the state and national levels.
Burd’s group has embraced two of Schwarzenegger’s central concepts — requiring everyone to have private insurance and providing subsidies to the poor — but not the requirement that employers pay for insurance.
By JORDAN RAU
Los Angeles Times
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