The business world is slightly kerfluffled this morning concerning WalMart announcing that they fully support President Obama’s healthcare initiative that would require employers to provide health insurance for all employees. Of course, if you look at this from WalMart’s view, this makes total sense. The people who run the company aren’t dummies which is apparent when you consider the success of WalMart through the years.
They know change is probably coming re: healthcare and it’s their job to figure out how best to deal with that change. The best way for them to deal with it is to have everyone else have to deal with it in exactly the same way so that they (WalMart) can utilize their economy of scale to make it cheaper and more efficient for them thus reinforcing their competitive advantage over their competitors.
They’ve already revolutionized health care once in a far more sweeping and meaningful way than Obama could ever hope to when they instituted the $4 monthly prescription and the $10 90 day prescription. Few people recognize this and most liberal people who hate WalMart would never admit it but when they rolled out this program, it effectively changed the health care landscape because people could get their prescriptions for a reasonable price. This is exactly what we’d hope would happen in a free market.
Of course, Obama doesn’t want a free-market health care system and instead would prefer the government, not known for doing anything particularly well or efficiently (see: Medicare, Social Security, et al) provide health care for everyone. WalMart, sensing a coming change in the political landscape, is positioning themselves to fully reap the reward of the government regulation. This is a genius move and I look forward to more companies looking for ways to make money and create competitive advantage on the back of the New World Order.