The Universal Health Care Debate Is Over

If the head of Wal-Mart and the head of Wal-Mart Watch [1] agree we need universal health care, then we need universal health care. QED.

McClatchy Newspapers [2] has the story:

A group of businesses and labor unions - led by Wal-Mart and one of the retailer's staunchest critics - Wednesday called for universal health care for all Americans by 2012.

The group, known as Better Health Care Together, is the latest coalition of with varying agendas and constituencies to call for fundamental changes in America's health care system since Democrats took control of Congress.

...

Coalition members also include the unlikely pair of Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott, Jr. and Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union that represents nearly one million janitors nationwide. The SEIU helped form Wal-Mart Watch, which has been sharply critical of the giant retailer's labor practices, pay scales and employee health benefits.

...

"I think it's time to admit employer-based health care system is dead, Stern said. "It's a relic of an industrial economy. America can't compete in the global economy when we ask our businesses to put the price of health care on the cost of their products when their competitors around the world do not."

Now, there's no agreement in this coalition about the policy specifics of any universal health care plan.

But that's where the debate shall now go. Not if we need universal health care -- that debate is over -- but how best to get there.

Click here [3] to learn more about the plan Campaign for America's Future is promoting: Health Care for America.