This week is “Cover the Uninsured Week.” It’s an effort to jump-start a discussion about the increasing number of people who have lost their health coverage.

But solutions are hard to come by, and many of the organizations involved in “Cover the Uninsured Week” are rowing in opposite directions. That’s one reason that there are now close to 1 million people without health insurance in our state.

Right now the heavy lifting for health coverage in the private sector is being done by responsible companies and by the state. For example, the Brown and Cole Company owns and operates Food Pavilion, Cost Cutter and other grocery stores in our state, 31 in all. It has 2,000 employees and pays health insurance for 95 percent of these employees. It pays $3.40 per hour for health coverage. Brown and Cole employees shoulder the co-pays and deductibles and receive good and secure health coverage.

Contrast this to Wal-Mart. That company, the world’s largest, pays for health coverage on a third to half of its work force, depending on who you believe. The co-pays and deductibles for those who have coverage are burdensome. At the same time, the average wage is $10, compared to the average wage at Brown and Cole stores of $15.

As a result, Wal-Mart employees and their dependents end up looking to the state for health coverage. Wal-Mart encourages its employees to sign up for the Basic Health Plan, so the public subsidizes Wal-Mart’s employees’ health care, and Wal-Mart’s profits.

Wal-Mart has figured out how to outsource its benefits (at no cost) to other employers (through those employers’ dependent coverage), the government and the taxpayer. As Brown and Cole CEO Craig Cole says, this situation makes “good employers feel like chumps for paying for the health care of their workers’ families, for the health care of their competitors’ families, for uncompensated care and for the state’s caseload.”

This isn’t fair for good employers, for the state, for the taxpayers, for Wal-Mart workers or for the workers at decent businesses whose market share is being eaten up by bottom-feeder corporations. So to build some responsibility for health coverage into business decisions and to level the playing field, Cole has joined with other employers, unions and health care advocates in developing the Health Care Responsibility Act.

The idea is simple: Businesses either provide health coverage or pay a fee to enable their employees to buy into the Basic Health Plan. The result would be to increase health coverage and spread the cost of health care among employers, employees and the public.

Who opposed this bill to encourage good business practices and spread the cost of health care? Wal-Mart. But so did the Association of Washington Business, the National Federation of Independent Business, the Washington Retail Association and the Washington Restaurant Association. It seems like business associations line up on the side of their worst employers, not their best.

You might think that the Washington Roundtable, the policy arm of the top 40 CEOs in our state, would carefully consider the Health Care Responsibility Act. After all, its companies, including Weyerhaeuser and Boeing, provide good health coverage for their employees. But in their most recent report, they offer two suggestions.

One is to Wal-Martize the provision of health care. The Roundtable suggests that the “state emulate the private sector and increase the share of costs borne directly by employees.” The second proposal is to drastically cut public expenditures for health care. If the state followed the Roundtable’s advice to cut spending by more than $1 billion, the only thing to do would be to drop health coverage and increase the uninsured.

What does “Cover the Uninsured Week” provide for these business associations? Cover; it makes them look concerned while their actions go in the opposite direction. An honest discussion would revolve around a harder question: What are you doing to actually expand health coverage, rather than just talking about it? Craig Cole would have the answer.

John Burbank, executive director of the Economic Opportunity Institute (www.eoionline.org), writes every other Wednesday. Write to him in care of the institute at 1900 Northlake Way, Suite 237, Seattle, WA 98103. His e-mail address is john@eoionline.org.