I rolled out of bed earlier than usual, staggered to 8 AM breakfast meeting at the Harvard Club sponsored by the Drum Major Institute, ate bagels, drank coffee, met Liza S (good to put a face to a name, finally.), heard Maryland State Senator Gloria Lawlah (D-Prince George's County), Working Families Party Director Dan Cantor, New York State Senator Diane Savino (D-Brooklyn & SI), DMI Ex.Dir. Andrea Batista Schlesinger, and DMI Board Member/Supermarket-owner John Castimatides.

They were discussing what may be a log-jam breaking proposal to force moderate and large retailers to provide health case insurance for their employees. Sen. Lawlah focused on her experience getting a similar health insurance bill enacted in Maryland. While there are four bills knocking around in Albany, only the WFP bill seems to have legs -- because only it has a Republican State Senate sponsor (Yonkers' Nick Spano). As currently drafted, the WFP Fair Share Bill would require retailers with more than 100 employees to provide health insurance or pay into a fund for the uninsured.

Everyone at this morning's panel viewed the Fair Share Bill as a partial step, not a solution, for getting health insurance to those not now covered. Catimatides, as an employer of unionized workers was concerned that retailers not insuring their employees were more profitable, that he couldn't compete effectively with them and that -- to the degree that the non-insured employees were covered by Medicaid -- the low-wage employers were sneaking tax subsidies to shore up their profits. (While only Wal-Mart was mentioned, other, non-unionized stores which don't insure their employees health may include Whole Foods, Starbucks etc.).

Mr. Cantor and Senator Savino saw passage of Fair Share as a way of realigning NYS employers. Now employers not paying insurance are opposed to being forced to do so. If the WFP version of Fair Share were enacted, 500,000 retail workers would be covered (300,000 more covered and 200,000 now insured through medicaid). Once new retailers were forced into insurance pool, they'd be more inclined to support universal health insurance, said Cantor. The politics of this is complex. (There is a hearing on the WFP bill May 23rd in Albany; check out their website -- www.workingfamiliesparty.org --for details.). In Cantor's view this is a win-win for the WFP: if they get the bill enacted it's a good victory, if they don't they can use it as a stick to beat up opponents.

Completely ignored by the panel was the fairly simple solution suggested by Paul Krugman a few days ago in the New York Times (link not supplied in accordance with Liza's policy) to extend Medicare coverage to all. It's simple, fairly cheap as compared to what we -- as a nation -- are spending now, and provides good care to all covered.