Lee Scott the health-clinic man

  • Share
  • Read Later

Says Wal-Mart boss Lee Scott: “Our goal should be for every man, woman and child in this country to have health insurance. The $2 trillion question, literally, is how do we get there?” You can get his whole speech here, so no point in running more quotes from it.

Scott also announced here at the World Health Care Congress that Wal-Mart will open 400 in-store health clinics over the next two to three years (it has 76 now), and up to 2,000 over the next five to seven years. They did an audience poll just before Scott started speaking, and if I remember correctly 37% (the biggest percentage) said Wal-Mart’s clinic plan was mainly just a way to draw more shoppers into stores. Scott acknowledged the skepticism, and I’m sure the Wal-Mart-hating health-care Klein will be able to explain to me why this is the worst idea ever. But if anybody can reduce health-care delivery costs, it’s the cost-crunchers from Bentonville.

Scott says half the customers at the clinics so far have been uninsured. That’s pretty interesting.

And now he’s done. No Q&A! What an outrage!