Wal-Mart CEO on health care, exporting of jobs, legal system

Forbes (Reuters) has this story: “Wal-Mart CEO wants government to fix health care”

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Chief Executive Lee Scott said Sunday that soaring health-care costs were among the biggest challenges facing retailers and called on the U.S. government to help.

In a speech to the National Retail Federation convention here, Scott said the U.S. health care system is in “crisis.”

“We believe it is time for the government to step in … and get a handle on health care costs,” Scott said. He gave no examples of potential remedies.

No doubt it is a crisis. But I am increasingly convinced that while government can help, the solution is not a one-size-fits-all government program. Better to focus on improving the environment within which competitiveness and entreprenurial spirit can find creative solutions. It’s unfortunate to hear capitalists such as Scott of Wal-Mart, who presumably reject Big Government solutions to other problems, begging for them in the health care arena.

Wal-Mart is the largest U.S. importer of Chinese goods, but Scott said the retailer believes in buying American and is willing to pay more to put U.S. goods on its shelves. . . .

Scott said manufacturing will continue shifting to China, but said cheap labor was not the only factor. He said some manufacturers have moved production to escape steep U.S. health-care and worker’s compensation costs as well as a legal system that he said badly needed reform.

Scott said there was “something wrong” with a legal system that awarded huge sums of money to lawyers, and not enough to people who were harmed.

“There ought to be some sanity,” he said, calling for tort reform to protect companies from “people who simply make their living from slip-and-falls.”

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