Coalition On Healthcare. Fine, But What Is It Really?

An unlikely coalition of about as powerful a group of players out there has joined forces to move the nation toward healthcare reform. Wal-Mart and AT&T have teamed up with the SEIU (basically the government workers union) and the Center for American Progress (individualists, be scared of any group with "progress" in their title) to form "Better Health Care Together". My first reaction is that the collectivists have won on healthcare. They've beat corporations and free-marketeers over the head so much that they've capitulated and will henceforth throw their weight behind collectivist national healthcare. Nonetheless, the optimist in me says "not so fast." So what is this group all about? Hard to tell. The first two of the group's foundational principles appear to be at odds and don't shed much light:
1. We believe every person in America must have quality, affordable health insurance coverage;
2. We believe individuals have a responsibility to maintain and protect their health;

We know what the words "every person...must" are code for...nationalized healthcare. But then they tell us that individual responsibility is important.

The public statements of key figures don't dispel the confusion either.

Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott:
“Government alone won’t and can’t solve this crisis. We have to work together – business, labor, government and our communities. We also need to empower people to take more responsibility and more control over their own health care"

OK, sounds good. Adding to this, Kelly Services's President Carl Camden says this:
“There has to be a way for Americans to access group coverage outside the traditional employment relationship...Our WWII vintage health care insurance system is woefully out of step with the global economy and the needs of more than 22 million American free agent workers who prefer a more flexible approach to work."

...and Intel's Craig Barrett:
"In particular the ideas on consumer empowerment to drive system efficiency are completely in line with the Dossia personal health record effort that many of today’s participants have helped kickoff.”

So far so good, but then you get the faint sound of nationalized, government-provided healthcare. John Podesta:
“Every person in America should have quality, affordable health care coverage. This coalition of business, union, and policy leaders can help break through the forces of the status quo and ensure that result by 2012.”

and then CWA President Larry Cohen:
"It is long past time to move health care – a public good – from the corporate balance sheet to the public balance sheet."

Sounds like a collectivist solution to me.

...and Andy Stern, Big Government Labor Poobah has this to offer:
“We can’t keep tinkering, hoping that incremental change will fix our broken health care system. We need fundamental change, and it is going to take new thinking, leadership, new partnerships, some risk taking, and compromising to make it happen. But that is what we all owe our country.”
What in Sam Hill does that mean?

So there are three interpretations here. 1) Either the unions have caved and will support more free market reforms or 2) the corporations have sold out and will support a government solution in order to get the costs off their own backs, or 3) these parties will work toward a compromise, hybrid approach that reforms the system with both competition-based, free market solutions and a significant government role.

I doubt it is 1, I hope it is 3, but I fear it is 2.