Wal-Mart, the Future of Healthcare?

In this June 1, 2007 file photo, of Vice Chairman Michael Duke during the annual Wal-Mart shareholders meeting in Fayetteville, Ark. Wal-Mart Stores' board elects Duke, Friday, Nov. 21, 2008, to succeed Lee Scott as president and CEO effective Feb. 1. (AP Photo/April L. Brown, File)

In the age of capitalism, few things are free.  Healthcare is business and anyone who needs medical attention is or wished to be a customer.

As long as I can recall, business organizations have lobbied and banded together to keep the liberal, communist costs from spilling into the profit margins (or lack thereof).  Something strange happened this month and I believe it is very significant to the battle of socialized medicine in the US.  The largest retailer on the planet announced that it was backing Obama’s health care initiative.  Wal-Mart announced that it will support the employer based health care mandate.  This is a profound statement that they have made.  Why the change of heart after all the years of denying employees benefits such as health care, overtime, fair wages, and other lawsuits accusing Wal-Mart of neglecting the same employees?

I believe it is an intelligent, cold, and calculated move by Mr. Duke.  He will be praised by the left pundits for enabling nationalized healthcare.  He will be deified by his employees who will receive his kind benefits.  The timing is impeccable.  At a time when its business as usual for Wal-Mart, the rest of the country is well aware of the economic difficulties currently plaguing the world.   I predict this mandate will be pushed hard and fast by Wal-Mart.  The government and supporters will force the same cost to the competition across the board.  Wal-Mart is prepared for this change, but the retailers, the hoteliers, the grocers, the restaurants, are not prepared for this extra burden.   This will increase the cost of business and make being an employer even more difficult.

The age old debate of nationalized health care is not a debate I care to engage.  I believe that Wal-Mart has much to gain from this recent change of attitude; partially to the difficulty it will cause other businesses.  In the age of capitalism, Wal-Mart is utopia and Duke is King, with loyal, happy, and now healthy subjects.

If this mandate bill gets signed to law, Obama will have accomplished what the Clintons and many others failed at time and time again.  The drug companies are on board, the hospitals are on board as of July 7^th, and only the doctors are left for the administration to appease.  To be continued….

Steve Jobs, Where’s the Blu-Ray?

My friend was getting a new Mac laptop. As we looked at all of the new models, something struck me as odd. None of the new Macs have Blu-Ray capability. I asked the ‘Hi, I’m a Mac’ representative about this oddity. He confirmed that Blu-Ray was absolutely not available. It is still not available. Of course computer makers can use whatever hardware they prefer, but there was something much more puzzling about this scenario to me.

Disney was the main proponent and advocate of the Blu-Ray standard. There was much hoopla regarding the Blu-Ray versus the HD-DVD format wars. Toshiba versus Sony. Winner takes all. Disney had vehemently supported Blu-Ray from the beginning. Disney has a large investment and interest in the high definition format of the future. So what? While most people know Apple and its products, everyone knows Disney and its products, yet very few people on Main Street know that the largest shareholder of Disney stock is none other than Steve Jobs. That’s right, Steve owned over 50% of Pixar, who was bought by Disney, making Steve the largest owner in the world of Disney stock. Steve owns around 7% of Disney stock which is definitely worth more than $3 billion dollars.

Here is the question that made my brain itch for two months or so: If Steve Jobs is Apple Computers (AAPL) and is by far and large the main owner of Disney (DIS), then why are there no Blu-Ray drives in his computers? And why does no one care?

The answer came to me in class months later in Dr. Shivakumar’s econ class. I believe the answer lies in incremental revenue. While Steve could shoehorn svelte Blu-ray drives in an iPhone if he so desired, he did not want people to use Blu-Ray. He needs us to use iTunes. Last June Apple stated that they sold or rent 50,000 movies a day. While it’s hard to put a dollar sign on profits from iTunes from movies, I guarantee that this figure is greater than the shareholder value of Disney Blu-Ray movies sold and used on a Mac computer. I have heard that in the newer models of Mac computers will feature Blu-Ray, I wonder how many iPod/iPhone/iTV consumers have already learned the ease and convince of using iTunes from nearly any couch in America. My hats off to Mr. Jobs, you are truly brilliant.