Business Roundtable
Press Release
December 1, 2004
Business Roundtable Releases December CEO Economic Outlook Survey
Business Roundtable is an association of chief executive officers of leading corporations with a combined workforce of more than 10 million employees in the United States and $4 trillion in annual revenues.
In the annual question about challenges to growth, CEOs cited health care costs as the greatest cost pressure to Corporate America…
“In 2005, Business Roundtable CEOs will work to alleviate the costs that keep our economy from reaching its potential and hurt the competitiveness of U.S. businesses,” said (Hank McKinnell, chairman of Business Roundtable and chairman and CEO of Pfizer Inc.). “In addition to a focus on deficit reduction and entitlement reform, a top priority will be seizing opportunities to improve the health care marketplace and mitigate soaring costs.”
http://www.businessroundtable.org/newsroom/Document.aspx?qs=5866BF807822B0F1AD7468422FB51711FCF50C8
Comment: Considering the source of this press release, questions inevitably arise:
Since the health care industry is a major sector of our economy, isn’t growth in the health care business sector a positive development for the economy?
If other sectors of the business community object to the costs of their employee health benefit programs, shouldn’t consideration be given to ending the link between employment and health care coverage?
If the nation decided that a more equitable system of funding health care should be established, what responsibility would business have to contribute to such an equitable system? (This question is crucial since business interests might be more supportive of an equitable, publicly funded, universal system if they were divorced from any obligation to fund it directly.)
And, finally, is Pfizer chairman and CEO Hank McKinnell, whose company has been a major contributor to excessive health care pricing, really the personality to lead the Business Roundtable in “seizing opportunities to improve the health care marketplace”?