States Are Battling Against Wal-Mart Over Health Care -NYT

[Rose Siding]

In the national debate over what to do about the growing number of working people with little or no health insurance, no other company may be taking more heat than the country's largest employer, Wal-Mart Stores.

The company, despite its popularity with consumers, has grown accustomed to being accused of crushing Main Street merchants with its sprawling stores and low prices and of driving down wages for workers across the retail industry. And more than a million former and current female Wal-Mart employees are part of a sex discrimination lawsuit that the company is fighting.

Now, Wal-Mart finds itself under attack for what critics see as its miserly approach to employee health care, which they say is forcing too many of its workers and their families into state insurance programs or making them rely on charity care by hospitals.
.............
A survey by Georgia officials found that more than 10,000 children of Wal-Mart employees were in the state's health program for children at an annual cost of nearly $10 million to taxpayers. A North Carolina hospital found that 31 percent of 1,900 patients who described themselves as Wal-Mart employees were on Medicaid, while an additional 16 percent had no insurance at all.

http://nytimes.com/2004/11/01/business/01health.html?hp&ex=1099285200&en=aaafa8aca1c09481&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. This amounts to nothing more than a stolen tax subsidy.

It must end. Now.

[tsuki]

2. Yes,

You can sell cheaply, if you force your employees to work for free, provide no benefits and pay the minimum wage.

[DBoon]

8. They sound like the PRC now!

Those "good Americans" at Walmart taking after the Chinese communists

[GoddessOfGuinness]

3. But if they give their employees adequate health care;

WalMart will have to raise their prices!

My god, we can't have that!

[w4rma]

7. And small buisnesses might actually be able to compete against the

Red Chinese Superstore.

[sandnsea]

15. Or cut their profits

NO, they do not have to raise prices in order to give raises or benefits. CEO incomes went up 500x, workers 40x, over the last 40 years. Prices are set by what the market will bear and the stockholders and CEO's will walk away with as much profit as they can. While WE, the taxpayer are subsidizing their employees with medical, food stamps, energy assistance and housing. It is NOT free market capitalism. We need to take this to the next step and get them to start exposing how much all these other programs cost in order for the Waltons to make billions a year. This is probably what will wake Americans up to the lie of the Republian free market "ownership" society.

[eternalburn]

4. another article

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/10025156.htm?1c

[DeadManInc]

5. wal mart

The Walton family are a bunch of cheap greedy bastards. I only shop their stores as a last resort. They treat their employees like shit. They fire them when they try to form a union. They just suck tremendously.

[Carolab]

12. I have NEVER shopped at a Wal-Mart

I can't imagine it even as a "last resort". What in the world did you need to buy there that you couldn't get elsewhere?

[AlCzervik]

6. wal-mart is the buggest reason on voting yes on prop 72

it requires employers to provide health care.

[idiosyncratic]

9. I voted "yes" on 72 and

the other day I was with a friend who frequently shops at Wal-Mart. She needed to go there for a followup eye exam, otherwise I would have talked her into shopping elsewhere.

I felt awful walking into that store; I will not shop Wal-Mart.

[arikara]

11. I never go in either

My husband goes in occasionally for some kitty treats of all things... I sit in the car. I really must make up some leaflets to have ready for such occasions.

[Carolab]

13. Jesus

and you sit there and LET him? You can't get kitty treats somewhere else?

People--we can't stop this megabox culture unless we REFUSE to support them!

[Robbie67]

10. CA: End the Wal-Mart welfare state...YES on 72!

http://www.yesonprop72.com/site/pp.asp?c=efIOISMEG&b=46410

[Ernesto]

22. I'm proud to be a Culeeforneeyon,

even if we have a grinning Hollywood action hero hangin' around. Yes on Prop 72 is leading in the polls & walmart is the main reason it will pass...
California: where the future arrives 1st.

[Robert Oak]

14. 4 reasons to boycott walmart

1. making the states subsidize their business through food stamps
and medicaid

2. sex discrimination

3. buying in mass Chinese imports which displace American goods and American workers and also keeps wages in China artifically low in order to supply Walmart with cheap goods at very low prices.

4. a smiley face as a corporate logo

[sandnsea]

16. 5. Controlling political speech

They are selling the Swift Boat book, but won't sell Jon Stewart or George Carlin. It'll "offend their customers". Bullshit, it's the first step in controlling what WE READ. If Wal-mart gets away with keeping books out of stores on such lame reasons as naked cartoons in the middle of a book, or an odd depiction of the Last Supper; what next? Call me crazy, but I think it's intentional and has everything to do with political speech. Can you imagine the power corporate stores would have if they made up excuses to not carry liberal books and magazines???

[DuctapeFatwa]

17. They can just make receiving any kind of public assistance grounds

for termination. That should smooth things over with the states.

[B3Nut]

18. Don't give them any ideas

Wal-Mart is pond scum. I avoid it whenever possible. Actually, I hate big-box chains of any type pretty much...especially Best Buy and Circuit City. If you don't sell enough ripoff extended warranties (a pure profit center) you get canned. I worked for Mall-Wart in high school...the manager was Catbert incarnate, minus the keen wit.

Todd P in Beerbratistan

[Eurobabe]

19. why has no one said NO to the BS of tying healthcare to employers????

This is NOT how healthcare is done in Europe. Healthcare coverage is NOT tied to the employer. This is what we have to stop here in the US.

Am I STOOPID or missing something????

We need a mass frickin' revolt!

[A Simple Game]

20. Am I STOOPID or missing something????

No!!!

I'm unemployed right now and covered by my Wife's insurance, but we pay for Medicaid, Medicare, most children(in NYS) through EPIC(?), and uninsured who visit the emergency room. It sometimes seems as if everyone has universal health care but us! Oversimplified but you get the point.

[DuctapeFatwa]

21. Americans have the freedom to purchase all the health care they can

afford. They do not want socialized medicine like Europe has.

Also, such a plan could reduce available funds earmarked for killing children in other countries by over 10%.