Wal-Mart Sides With Obama on Health Care

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Wal-Mart made waves with its recent announcement that it supports requiring large employers to offer health insurance benefits to their workers. Wal-Mart has long been a favorite villain for activists, and there are multiple websites dedicated to critiquing the company’s actions on numerous issues, including employee health care.

Some are wowed by the company’s sudden about-face — “A kinder, gentler Wal-Mart?” one headline asked — while others are sneering that Wal-Mart is merely trying to screw over its competitors.

Or not sneering. “I like Wal-Mart,” Todd Sullivan writes at Seeking Alpha. “I shop there quite a bit. Let’s not read anything into this like a sudden altruistic bent or support for the current administration’s policies.”

Wal-Mart provides health care to it employees. Much of the competition does not. Should they then be required to do so, the company’s cost basis for its business suddenly rises… considerably.

…It is as simple as “whatever hurts your competition helps you”.

As I said yesterday, I think similar logic applies to food safety legislation. The current system doesn’t give much benefit to companies that choose to voluntarily invest more in food safety — if your competitors wind up with a problem, the confused public will most likely avoid the your products as well. Stronger safety requirements would help the companies that are already doing a good job.

Anyway, regardless of Wal-Mart’s motivation, the move is significant. As the Wall Street Journal described it, this is “a major break with most other large companies.”

The support of Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer, could give momentum to one of the most-contentious aspects of legislation taking shape in Congress to fix the health system.

Tags: Food, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Health Care, Vertical Industries, Benefits, Healthcare, Food & Beverage, Human Resources, Manufacturing, Katherine Glover

Katherine Glover is a Minneapolis-based print, radio and online journalist. She's written for Salon.com, Sierra Magazine and many others, and she does a weekly blog on immigration issues for MinnPost.

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1

Susan4

07/03/09 | Report as spam

RE: Wal-Mart Sides With Obama on Health Care

Ha!!!! They are doing this, IMO, to garner public support. As a previous employee, I can tell you their "health care" is one of the worst packages I have ever seen or had. For a company that makes BILLIONS of dollars (and MILLIONS and MILLIONS in PROFIT).. their health care is a joke.

When I was there, the coverage was Major Medical only with HIGH ($5,000 and up) deductibles. There was no 'wellness' coverage. There was no yearly mammogram. There was basically nothing to use unless you were unfortunate enough to get in a serious accident or develop a SERIOUS illness. I knew of one employee, a youngish man, who developed a brain tumor. He had to have surgery and all that goes with cancer. His medication costs were very expensive. Do you think Wal-Mart's health insurance covered his medication? Nope... he was paying, and I kid you not, over $600.00 a MONTH for his medicine - out of his pocket and we know that his pockets were not very deep, given that he was a W-M employee.

How is it a small company, such as the one I am now working for PT, can offer WONDERFUL benefits, a premium that is affordable and get 80/20 coverage when a giant like W-M, with ALL of their profit (just how much do the Walton's need to make, anyway? Isn't several million a year enough for them?) just doles out "lip-service benefits"?

I do realize I'm on a rant.. but I learned to despise Wal-Mart and it's practices over the years I was there. If anyplace needs a UNION.. Wal-Mart is it! Just watch W-M let that happen, lol!

I also realize that W-M is huge and has cazillion employees and my little PT job company has under 500 employees, therefore they have less exposure to risk.. but come on, I ask again: just how much money do the Walton's need to make and how much does the senior management need to make, as it is being all made on the backs of their employees.

Wal-Mart is a community fraud, IMO. Good PR.. but that's all it is, PR.
2

katherineglover

07/06/09 | Report as spam

RE: Wal-Mart Sides With Obama on Health Care

Susan -- Good PR might be an added benefit, but I don't think that's the primary motivation. You raise a good point though -- Wal-Mart is supporting mandatory health plans for employees, but the quality of these health plans is not really discussed. If Wal-Mart gets on board now and gets involved in the process, it can try to ensure the rules don't push it beyond what it's already doing. And take a jab at competitors in the process.