S.E.C. Backs Health Care Balloting - NYTimes.com

S.E.C. Backs Health Care Balloting - NYTimes.com:

"WASHINGTON — The Securities and Exchange Commission, shifting its position, has told companies they must allow shareholders to vote on a proposal for universal health insurance coverage.

Shareholders, including religious groups and labor unions, have offered the proposal in an effort to draw the nation’s largest corporations deeper into a debate over the future of health care, fast emerging as one of the most important issue in domestic policy.

The S.E.C. has told Boeing, General Motors, United Technologies, Wendy’s International and Xcel Energy over the last several months that they may not omit the health care proposal from their proxy materials."

An interesting approach. I am not surprised to hear many companies' officers arguing that this is neither related to their business nor useful, but they are wrong on both counts. As the article points out, some major companies are already finally coming to grips with the fact that health care in the US is hurting their competitiveness and profitablilty, so it does matter to every business, no matter what your core business is. And it will become extrememly useful when companies' managers finally get around to rejecting their juvenile, knee-jerk response that health care system reform is always bad, and that when the Fortune 1000 push an issue, the government listens. Of course, quite a bit of the Fortune 1000 have vested stakes in the status quo, but the vast majority of us have an interest in serious reform.

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