Universal healthcare: the tide turned today.

We're going to get universal healthcare.

The tide of the Civil War turned at Gettysburg. In World War II, the tide turned in the west when Hitler failed to conquer Britain, and turned in the east when he failed to capture the Caucasus oilfields.

In the American War for Universal Healthcare, the tide turned today, when the good guys captured . . .

Wal-Mart.

Good news from the front, below the fold.

From today's New York Times:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Executives from Wal-Mart and three other major U.S. employers on Wednesday joined hands with union leaders in setting a goal of providing ''quality, affordable'' health care for every American by 2012. . . .

Joining Wal-Mart Stores Inc. CEO Lee Scott and Service Employees International Union leader Andrew Stern at a Washington press conference were top executives from Intel Corp., AT&T Inc. and Kelly Services Inc., a temporary staffing agency.

Now, I don't believe for one second that Wal-Mart has gotten on board out of the goodness of its heart. I suspect it has made a cold-hearted, flinty-eyed decision that universal healthcare would be good for its bottom line, for two reasons:

1. Sick workers are less productive.

2. Having a largely uninsured workforce leads to bad publicity.

I further suspect Wal-Mart hopes to steer the debate towards ending our employer-based health-insurance system in favor of universal government- provided coverage. Wal-Mart's workers tend to be low-paid, which means neither they nor Wal-Mart can really afford the full costs of their health coverage. (Certainly not while insurance companies suck up a lot of health care expenditures -- isn't it 31%? -- on profits and administrative costs.) Universal government-provided coverage would simply get Wal-Mart off the hook. More from today's Times article:

[The Wal-Mart and other CEOs] did not propose any specific policies to achieve this goal, or commit to spending any extra money in the near-term to provide health coverage to more workers. . . .

But [Wal-Mart CEO] Scott and others did not lay out a detailed plan, and in response to a reporter's question he said Wal-Mart is not committed to spending more on health care or making any immediate promises to provide health coverage to more workers.

The SEIU funds campaign group Wal-Mart Watch, which as recently as last month said Wal-Mart's health plans were a raw deal for employees. But [SEIU president] Stern said he joined Wal-Mart and the other employers because America's health care system requires fundamental change.

''It's time to admit the employer-based health care system is dead,'' Stern said.

If, like me, you think employment-based coverage is fundamentally a bad idea, the CEOs' unwillingness to spend more money is actually a good sign. It means they intend to push the government to pick up the slack.

And Wal-Mart tends to get what it wants.

Why Ford (which lost $12+ billion last year), GM, DaimlerChrysler, and the UAW didn't beat this Wal-Mart cabal to the punch is certainly a puzzlement to me. The major U.S. automakers now spend more on health care than on steel, and they're shedding jobs like crazy. Overseas competitors' workers have government-provided health coverage, and even the U.S. operations of Toyota, Honda, Subaru, et al. don't have the massive retiree health costs of the U.S. Big Three. Toyota announced last year it was locating a plant in Canada rather than the American South, partly because the Canadian government provides health care. (Story here. Better education was the other major factor.) But I predict it's only a matter of time before GM, Ford, DaimlerChrylser, and the UAW join the call for universal government-provided coverage. Resistance is futile.

There was a lot of bloody fighting left after Gettysburg, after Stalingrad, after the Battle of Britain. As Churchill said, "it was not the end, or even the beginning of the end, but it was the end of the beginning."

Today, the beginning of the fight for universal healthcare has ended.

It's about time.

P.S. Why employer-based health coverage is a bad idea:

1. If you lose your job, you lose your coverage.

2. If you lose your job because you're too sick or injured to work, this is precisely when you need coverage the most. Lack of coverage can mean you don't get the treatment you need to get better and return to work. In theory, you can extend (for a limited time) your old employer's coverage under COBRA, but your premium will go way up -- and you can't pay it because you've just lost your income. No income, no treatment, no improvement -- you lose your life savings, your home. I've seen it happen.

3. If you or a member of your family have a serious pre-existing condition, you're pretty much stuck with your old employer -- no leaving for a better job at another company, and no way would you dare to start your own business. Even Republicans should be able to understand this is Bad For Bidness.