Once minor differences in the House and Senate versions are reconciled, Maryland's legislature will pass a bill requiring employers of more than 10,000 people to spend at least 8% of payroll on employee health benefits (or contribute the same amount into the state healthcare system). This is being reported in the media as "anti-Wal-Mart legislation", as the only other employers in the state of that size (Johns Hopkins, Giant Foods, and Northrop Grumman) already pass the healthcare threshhold.
The odd fact that employers explicitly fund health care for so many people in the US is a relic of another government intervention in the labor market, in the mid-20th century. I'm so glad to see that, instead of pursuing systematic solutions to the real health-care issues facing the state (not just those who work at Wal-Mart), the legislature is preserving this distorting anachronism in the system by cherry-picking a firm that is being slaughtered by PR.
If Wal-Mart is violating existing laws, bust them on those laws. If the societal health safety net is inadequate, fix the safety net in a systematic way that shares the costs and benefits equitably. But please, don't write laws to pillory the villain-of-the-week for the cause-of-the-month.
Friday, January 13, 2006
At least Target is safe
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3 comments:
Its strange that when Judges make incremental precedents, its hailed as jurisprudence but when legislators do it, it's called pillory.
What's good about this law is that it discourages companies from providing thousands of jobs to relatively unskilled labor. Don't like employment without health care, legislators? Try unemployment without health care!
Clearly what America needs and wants is simple
1) The best health care in the world
2) Provided to everyone
3) For free to patients, employers, and taxpayers [if anyone has to pay for it, we will make bad people pay for it]
4) Not run by the government
5) Or health insurance companies
6) And still allows Doctors to be well paid
7) And only allows good people to sue for malpractice and then only the the doctor is a bad person
8) And allows people in comas to talk and express their wishes
9) which is of course, to come out of a coma
10) and dance
11) even if they couldn't dance before
12) and of course the doctor can do this
13) because its magical america
14) where people can regrow organs
15) and diseases only make bad people sick
16) and if there is ever a really complicated situation we can stop time to consider all of the possibilities
17) and hospital food tastes good.
I assure you, I did not "hail" Kelo v. New London as jurisprudence.
nor do you think its an incremental decision, as such your statement is inapposite.
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