Reply #4: New Wal-Mart Health Plan—The Placebo Effect

[Acebass]

New Wal-Mart Health Plan—The Placebo Effect

This weekend, Wal-Mart Chief Executive Lee Scott will tell the National Governor's Association (NGA) that the nation's largest retailer is going to bring health care coverage to more of its workers. While Wal-Mart is the world's largest employer, very few of its workers can afford health coverage.

Why, after so vigorously defending its long-standing health care plan—one that covered fewer than half its workers, was unaffordable for the majority of low-wage Wal-Mart employees and shifted billions in health care costs to state governments—would Wal-Mart trumpet its new and supposedly more generous plan?

The New York Times , hits the nail on the head.

The changes…underscore how big a public relations threat the health care issue has become for the nation's largest private employer.

Got to hand it to Scott: The NGA's a great place to make the announcement. After all, working families and their community allies in more than 30 states are pushing their state lawmakers to enact Fair Share Health Care legislation. State budgets are being pushed to the breaking point by growing Medicaid costs.

The AFL-CIO Fair Share Health Care initiative would ensure the largest corporations—like Wal-Mart—stop shifting health care insurance costs onto workers, taxpayers and other businesses. In general, Fair Share Health Care legislation requires large, profitable corporations to spend a certain percentage of their payroll to provide health care benefits for their employees or pay into a state health care fund.

When workers can't afford or are not eligible for their employer's health insurance, families are forced to turn to taxpayer-funded programs such as Medicaid or the State Children's Health Insurance Program, costing taxpayers some $21 billion a year, according to the Commonwealth Fund.

You can help the Fair Share Health Care mobilization by send a message to your state lawmakers urging their support. Click here .

The details of the new Wal-Mart plan won't be released before Scott's performance for the governors. But the Times did report that eligibility requirements would be eased. Today, part-time workers must wait for two years before being able to sign up and full-time workers face a six-month wait. Given the low percentage of workers who now have health coverage under the Wal-Mart plan, any improvements will be welcome. But it remains to be seen whether the world's largest employer is really ready to do right by its workers and their families on this crucial issue.

“What is clear,” the Times wrote, “is that Wal-Mart would still require workers, whose average pay is less than $20,000 a year, to pay hefty annual deductibles and monthly premiums.”

Doesn't sound like much of cure for a real sick health plan, now does it?