Reply #65: LAT: Wal-Mart's Memo Blurs Its Message on Benefits

[DeepModem Mom]

Wal-Mart's Memo Blurs Its Message on Benefits
As the retailer vows to widen coverage, the document suggests 'bold steps' to cut health costs.

By Abigail Goldman and Lisa Girion, Times Staff Writers


....On Monday, Chief Executive H. Lee Scott Jr. pledged to bring health insurance within reach of his 1.3 million U.S. employees. On Wednesday, a leaked company memo revealed "bold steps" to reign in Wal-Mart's employee benefit costs.

Among the recommendations: using more part-time workers, cutting life-insurance payouts, pushing spouses off health plans through higher premiums and trying to dissuade unhealthy people from seeking jobs by, among other things, requiring cashiers to gather carts in Wal-Mart's vast parking lots....

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"I don't think the DNA of Wal-Mart has changed at all," said HSBC Securities analyst Mark Husson, returning Wednesday from an analyst meeting at Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. "It's like a religious cult — it has a low-cost gospel to bring to the country and sees it as a divine duty to do that and nothing is going to get in its way. It will do what it has to do and say what it needs to say to get there."

In the healthcare memo, whose contents were first reported in the New York Times, Executive Vice President of Benefits Susan Chambers wrote to the company's board of directors that Wal-Mart workers on average spent 8% of their income on healthcare — almost double the national average. Last year, Chambers wrote, nearly two-fifths of those enrolled in Wal-Mart health plans spent 16% of the average Wal-Mart income on healthcare.

What's more, 46% of the children of Wal-Mart employees either are on Medicaid or are uninsured, the memo said. That marked the first time that Wal-Mart has acknowledged that a significant number of employee dependents rely on public assistance. On Wednesday, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman called that figure "unacceptable."...


http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-walmart27oct27,0,4488701.story?coll=la-home-business