Business and health care

Almost every time I've written about health care, I've made the point that it is no longer in the interest of business to be involved in health care. I've also said that it is not in the interest of citizens to have health care mediated by the financial issues that businesses must confront in their focus on profitability.

Today the New York Times has an excellent report that summarizes the issues nicely. The bottom line, now that business leaders are pushinng for an alternative model for health care in America, a new front has opened, with a fundamental realignment of interests.

“The refrain from business was, ‘We can’t afford to do universal health care,’ ” says Wyden, whose plan calls for shifting responsibility for buying insurance from employers to individuals. “Now the refrain is, ‘We can’t afford not to do it.’ ” The Business Roundtable, one of Washington’s most influential business lobbies, now endorses universal coverage, at least in broad principle. And probably no spectacle captured the spirit of the times more than a joint conference held in February by Andy Stern and a man he has spent much of the last few years attacking, Lee Scott, the C.E.O. of Wal-Mart. Together the two pronounced the need for universal coverage by 2012.

It is no longer a question of whether health care will shift. It is now a question of when and how. But moving businesses out of the picture is a good and important development.