McD pledges backing for White House health plan

Nation's Restaurant News,  March 19, 2007  

Tags: health care, White House

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CHICAGO -- McDonald's Corp., the only restaurant company among 27 Illinois corporations, business groups and colleges that met here March 8 with U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, pledged to support a White House plan to reduce health care costs by steering employees to the best-value providers.

Leavitt has been mustering corporate backing for the yet-unnamed initiative, which would be enacted state by state. Employers would require insurers to meet comparative-disclosure standards on providers' prices and quality levels, with employers also pledging to reward employees for making value-based choices.

McDonald's, which has about 400,000 employees, joined with General Electric and IBM two years ago to obtain group coverage that provides substantial savings to McDonald's workers, though they pay 100 percent of the premiums.

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