Wal-Mart Off the Hook—Judge Overturns Maryland Fair Share Health Care Law

[Omaha Steve]

Full article http://blog.aflcio.org/2006/07/19/wal-mart-off-the-hook-judge-overturns-maryland-fair-share-health-care-law/

Wal-Mart Off the Hook—Judge Overturns Maryland Fair Share Health Care Law

Maryland’s Fair Share Health Care law, which requires large employers such as Wal-Mart to spend at least 8 percent of their payroll on employee health care or pay into a state fund, was overturned this afternoon by a federal judge.

The law was designed to encourage health coverage for workers at large, profitable companies and to prevent rich firms from sticking taxpayers with the health care costs of employees who are forced to turn to publicly financed health care such as Medicaid.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said today’s ruling will in no way deter working families from demanding large corporations live up to their responsibility and do their part to address our nation’s health care crisis.

Snip: The AFL-CIO’s Fair Share Health Care Campaign, joined by a coalition of union, community and health care groups, rallied public and political support for the Fair Share legislation.

The Fair Share Health Care Campaign has been active in more than 30 states, but Maryland was the first to pass the law.

Fair share health care: http://www.aflcio.org/issues/legislativealert/stateissues/healthcare/

[ThomCat]

1. Damn.

I hope they can appeal this.

[Omaha Steve]

2. Judge Gives Wal-Mart Reprieve on Benefits NYT new info

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/20/business/20walmart.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1153423025-0jJxYZ9ylaxCTGvX0n9lwA

Snip: While Maryland’s state attorney general said he expected to appeal the decision, the ruling was viewed by both opponents and supporters as a defeat for states trying to govern corporate behavior.

Snip: Unlike the Maryland bill, which was passed over the veto of the Republican governor, Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., the Massachusetts law was also viewed as a ground-breaking political compromise, requiring individuals to buy coverage if they have the means and companies to pay a fee if they did not offer insurance.

But any state law, including the one in Massachusetts, could be challenged on similar grounds since the ruling finds that the federal law pre-empts any state efforts. While the courts may well draw distinctions between different laws, the question, Mr. Piro said, is “how much room to do you have to experiment?”

Some policy experts say states are already looking more to the Massachusetts model than the one in Maryland in thinking about how to expand health insurance for their residents. “What happened in Massachusetts is going to be far more instructive to other states than what happened in Maryland,” said Ronald Pollack, executive director of Families USA, a health advocacy group that supported the Maryland bill.

In Maryland, Governor Ehrlich issued a statement after the ruling praising it but legislators said they would try to draft a new law if the state loses its appeal. “We will not abandon this,” said Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr., the Democratic president of the Maryland Senate.

“To continue to allow this huge corporation to take profits out of the state without providing adequate health care coverage would be wrong,” he said.

And proponents said the law had already influenced Wal-Mart’s health insurance policies. Since it was passed, the retailer has announced that it will permit part-time employees to enroll their children in the health plan and that it will reduce by a year the waiting period before a new part-time employee is eligible for benefits.