Power to the People: Update

Jacob Goldstein at the WSJ health blog has picked up the story about shareholder voting on health care reform (click here to read his post). He also links to Xcel’s proxy (here). Their board is recommending a vote against the proposal. Interesting to note — Xcel’s Board of Directors includes Douglas Leatherdale, who also sits on the Board of UnitedHealth (another company that opposed the proposal, but ended up posting this letter on their web site in an attempt to possibly play it both ways by “agreeing” to some similar principles.)

No surprise that UnitedHealth stands to lose a lot from a universal health insurance model, especially one that would move towards greater public administration and less opportunity for private health insurance companies to extract money from the system! At the same time, it’s surprising that so many companies that stand to benefit from universal coverage are also opposing the proposal. For them, it might mean a chance to unshackle themselves from the exploding cost of employee health insurance packages.