After 30 yrs. of whining about the cost of an employment based healthcare insurance system, why

is the business community on the side of big pharma and the insurance corporations? Why do we not hear from employers? AND how do we confront Rs about the dissonance of railing against the cost of doing business due to legacy health care benefit costs while seeking to maintain the status quo?

I don't get how we keep ignoring this, and why we are not better able to exploit this better. I don't understand what is to be gained by business remaining silent on this issue and us not confronting the advocates for the "free" market system the Rs are proposing. The latter point can be argued by pointing to how successful the "free" market has been able to put the thumb on the scale and demand bailouts with a gun to the taxpayers' heads. WHY are we not hammering on this?

If the media don't cover it, it didn't happen.

it can and will eventually get involved in EVERY business. It's an idiotic slippery-slope kind of argument.

Plus, a few of them genuinely (and naively) believe that the free market can do everything better. Then again, if you're a business person, you probably wouldn't be an entrepreneur if you didn't believe you could do something better than someone else, so that might just come with the territory.

...currently

A link to how it's done, I'm still looking for the 46% source...I read it somewhere...

http://www.allbusiness.com/human-resources/benefits-insurance-health/1116479-1.html

In late 2008, a conference of big businesses changed the landscape by strongly supporting mandates, which before that were thought to doom any plan. Their support changed that. Here is a link to Ivan Seidenberg, CEO of Verizon testifying to the Senate Finance committee on that issue and others. http://finance.senate.gov/sitepages/hearing111908.htm

The concerns of small businesses were expressed well by Senator Kerry in 2004, when he was the chair of the Small Business Committee. One of their major concerns is that given that they have few employees, their per employee plans are much higher as the number of people over whom risk is pooled is very small. The plans before Congress allow both small businesses and people to join broader plans.

(I agree that neither of these speak of the legacy costs, but they do show business has been listened to.)

that would be allowing the people to win a battle against the giant corporations-- I guess that's the sticking point.

It has bugged me for decades-- especially as our companies competed against countries with national health insurance -- why don't they push to get our government to take on those costs? It didn't make sense.

Except that it creates a desperate workforce that needs a job to afford to keep themselves alive and out of debtors' prison (aka homelessness).

And it "sends a message" to the unruly rabble that they can't just write letters, hold protests and vote to get what they want. It takes multi-millions in campaign contributions.

And now, it takes even more millions to hire professional right wing PR firms to stir up fear and hatred in "genuine grass roots" movements to bully the party that seems less willing to go along with what the private sector wants. Make sure they see how easily you can stir up a lunatic fringe to dominate the news and make it appear that there is "genuine opposition to reform."

Anything that weakens their power over labor is bad in their eyes, even if you could make a dollars and cents argument that it's in their interest and in the interest of the country as a whole. Contrary to official American ideology markets are not rational. Employers, or rather the corporate management class as a whole, emotionally reject the prospect of their employees feeling free to move about. Also while they are apparently happy enough to support the costs of permanent war and empire, they strongly resent having to contribute anything to the health and well-being of "unworthy" "non-achievers" who work for them. If you were going to ABOLISH employee insurance laws that would be one thing. Then any insurance benefits employees got would be a pure gift from management - and could be withheld or dropped at whim. They'd be for abolition, but not for moving their "gift" or hold over employees into the public realm as a public right. Even though healthier happier workers will work better for them, they just see it a loss. It's resentment of who'll get the biggest benefit from reform and resentment over feeling that power over other people's lives is being taken away from them by meddling do-gooders. So they blind themselves to the larger benefit to their bottom line and to our international competitiveness and start calling Pres. Obama names like 'Hugo Chavez'.