Health Care for Autumn?

To begin:
47 million or so Americans have no health insurance in the US. According to this page (it's a PDF), half of them are children.
America spends more per person on health care than any country in the world. According to this page (another PDF), in 1998, the US spent $4,178 per capita on health care. The next highest was Switzerland, which spent $2,794 (knowing that, see point #1 again.)
Wal-Mart is the largest employer in the US.
Wal-Mart wants you to have health insurance.

Here’s the deal. In order to keep costs down, Wal-Mart doesn’t pay their associates very much money. This was an okay strategy, except when employees get sick. So, Wal-Mart offered their associates documents for obtaining free health care from the state they lived in. Well, the states noticed, and they took steps to stop Wal-Mart.

On a different timeline, other people noticed that Wal-Mart’s low prices had a high cost to municipalities – both from the aforementioned cost to give them health insurance, and the closing of stores in small towns.

Anyway, this bad PR has an impact on Wal-Mart’s business. The stock suffers. Wal-Mart even attempts to recast itself as a fashion retailer, taking out ads in Vogue.

None of it seems to work. Thus, here they are: big business getting together with labor unions to pressure the government into offering health care. The point is this: the US Health care system is employer driven. Big companies are responsible for health care. When they don't fulfill their responsibility, it hurts their business. Thus, they wonder how to fix it. Bingo. A state sponsored health care system. Large corporations that already offer health care could save billions if the government simply picked up the tab. Of course, the massive insurance companies and HMO's who currently call the health care shots will have something to say about all this. But they're fighting he largest company in the world. And Wal-mart doesn't lose.

Meaning, I predict, before Autumn is old enough for it to matter, this country will have health care.