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Check out Wake Up Walmart’s latest piece over on Huffington Post. It highlights the story of Patricia from Ohio, a Walmart worker who was faced with the choice of going to work sick or losing her job because of Walmart’s irresponsible and harmful sick day policy. 

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From our allies over at Wake Up Walmart:

WakeUpWalmart.com and a coalition of supporters today launched a national week of action against Walmart’s irresponsible sick leave policy.  WakeUpWalmart.com will hold events at 50 Walmart stores across the country to deliver ‘demerits’ and a letter to local store managers calling on Walmart to change its unfair and harmful sick day policy.

Last fall the New York Times article Lack of Sick Days May Worsen Flu Pandemic, exposed Walmart’s track record of giving employees “demerits” that can lead to termination when they call in sick.  A number of workers across the country reported retaliation and termination from Walmart due to illness.

Beatrice Parker, a former greeter at Walmart # 3371 in Charlotte, N.C., felt forced to resign due to Walmart’s sick leave policy after suffering from a bladder infection caused by not being given bathroom breaks on the job.

In a new video released today, Parker describes abuse and age discrimination and asks Walmart CEO Mike Duke, “If you don’t have any or can’t have any concern for the way I was treated in this Walmart, please have some for the people who work there, especially the older people.” You can watch the video on the right of this post.

Walmart’s policies and actions create a working environment where employees feel they are faced with a choice between spreading the flu and keeping their job.  Walmart deserves public demerits for sick leave policies that put the public at risk and make its employees sicker.

The Demerit Walmart program is supported by leading advocacy groups such as the MomsRising.org and the Labor Partnership for Working Families.

“MomsRising is extremely concerned by news reports that Walmart associates risk receiving demerits (which can lead to termination) for taking earned paid sick days,” said MomsRising Executive Director Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner.  “Such a practice is a public health hazard and a threat to the economic security of Walmart associates and their families. We call on Walmart to publicly respond to these charges and immediately end any ongoing practice of issuing demerits .”

Walmart is America’s largest private employer and sets the standard for workplaces in the retail industry.  Walmart associates should not be afraid of losing their jobs simply because they are too sick to help customers.  Walmart can and should live up to the highest possible workplace standards. 

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Walmart just announced, with much patting of their own back, that more of their employees are enrolled in their company health insurance this year. The total number of their own workers enrolled in their insurance? It is up to 54% from 52% last year. The industry standard, by the way, is 65% and many big retailers insure a much larger percentage of their workforce. Costco, for example insures 85% of its workers.

But the real news in Walmart’s announcement is that more employees are uninsured and more employees are relying on state aid. The AP reports:

The number of Wal-Mart employees with health coverage — provided by either Wal-Mart or another source — dropped from 94 percent last year to 87 percent.

Wal-Mart said 43,000 of its workers receive health coverage through a state assistance program, up from 36,000 last year.

So not only does Walmart fail to insure 644,000 of its workers, a whopping 182,000 are left completely uninsured while another 43,000 (that Walmart admits to) must rely on Medicaid and other state run programs.

David Tovar, Walmart’s spokesperson said, “We believe this is just one more indicator that our nation’s current health care system is not sustainable.” But the comment fails to understand that Walmart is a part of the problem with our nation’s current health care system. Employers have to take some of the responsibility for providing health insurance and they fail to take any.

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Major news from Wal-Mart on the health care front. And its not good. 

Recently, Wal-Mart has been in the news urging for health care reform and even accepting a nation wide employer mandate as part of the package. But today we see another side of Wal-Mart strategy: cutting benefits. In a letter to its employees, Wal-Mart notified its workers that their health benefits no longer covered Preferred Brand Name and Non-Preferred Brand Name drugs. Instead, in attempt to allegedly help Wal-Mart employees save “a yearly savings of over $300,” Wal-Mart’s health care plan will only include a single Generic Drug Plan.

It didn’t take long for Wal-Mart to show its true Health Care colors. From Bnet:

Previously, Walmart’s health benefits covered about 260 brand name drugs — from Abilify to Zyprexa – according to a Walmart “Quick Reference Preferred Brand List” from January 2009. The July 20, 2009, list contains only about 128 preferred brands.

The move has huge consequences for workers’ health — Walmart is the U.S.’s largest employer with about 1.1 million employees (or “associates,” as the company calls them). Roughly 700,000 associates are covered by the health plan, a Walmart spokesperson said.

Wal-Mart notified its employees in a letter, and about the details of the plan and specified which drugs would and would not be covered:

Effective July 20, 2009, the Preferred and Non-Preferred Brand Name Drug programs will be eliminated and will be replaced with a singe [sic] Brand Name Drug Plan. All of the drugs covered under the Non-Preferred Brand Name Drug Program will be eliminated (except Specialty Drugs).

Important changes to your Pharmacy benefits include: … A single Brand Name Drug benefit with a cost to you of $30 or 20 percent, whichever is greater. (Any Brand prescription drug not on the Brand Name Drug List will not be covered.)

We are committed to helping you save money and live a better life.

Download the entire letter here.

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Despite threats from the National Retail Federation, Target and Kelly Services are open to supporting an employer mandate on health care.

After Wal-Mart, Center for American Progress, and SEIU sent a letter to President Obama on June 30th expressing support for health care reform, many retailers were shocked by Wal-Mart’s show of solidarity with the labor movement on a contentious issue. However, some retailers began to realize that if Wal-Mart thinks it’s ok to support this, maybe we should think about it as well. When Wal-Mart leads, others will most certainly follow.

Over the years, we have implored Wal-Mart to use its power and influence for the greater good. Whether for health care reform, the Employee Free Choice Act, or wage increases, Wal-Mart can really make a difference if it wants to make the effort. Nevertheless, it’s sad that it took Wal-Mart over four years—with a hard push from organized labor—to realize it can make positive changes in this area. Wal-Mart is making the right choice by working with labor unions towards a goal of providing health care for all Americans.

But we hope Wal-Mart doesn’t think this is all it has to do to become a responsible company.  There is a lot left on the table, like its opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act, tax avoidance schemes, environmental destruction, deliberate efforts to destroy small businesses, and exporting jobs overseas. Supporting health care reform is definitely a step in the right direction but Wal-Mart still has a long way to go.

Target, Kelly Services May Back Mandated Health Care [Bloomberg]

July 14 (Bloomberg)—Target Corp. and Kelly Services Inc. said they may support Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s call for mandatory medical insurance by large companies as part of a proposed overhaul of U.S. health care.

“Conceptually, we can accept an employer mandate,” said Kay Rubbelke, a spokeswoman for Minneapolis-based Target, the country’s second-biggest discount retailer after Wal-Mart.

Kelly Services, the Troy, Michigan-based provider of temporary workers, could support a mandate that has effective cost-containment provisions, said Jim McIntire, vice president of public affairs.

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We’ve received many, many emails and submissions from Wal-Mart employees over the past few years. And even more have gone to our Wal-Mart Speak Out site to share their stories. It’s much more infrequent that we come across an industry professional that deals with Wal-Mart employees on a regular basis, but in today’s Baltimore Sun that’s exactly what we found. It’s a letter from a doctor, and we’ll let it stand on its own merits.

Wal-Mart is an image conscious opportunist. I have several Wal-Mart employees as my patients. I can in all honesty declare that Wal-Mart, a wealthy corporation, for years got away with providing its employees no health care coverage at all or the type of coverage from which doctors could barely eke out payments.

Out of pocket expenses for patients are outrageous with this coverage. Hand me a Wal-Mart health insurance card, and I will let out a spontaneous sigh of exasperation because I know from experience what lies ahead is a runaround for meager compensation after I have delivered all the services.

You say Wal-Mart has obtained religion and is behind Obama’s health plan? Will there be a richer bounty on my plate now for tending to my overworked and underpaid Wal-Mart flock tenderly? Somehow I doubt my sighs of exasperation will cease with this new miracle under way in the health care sector.

A fed up doc

Wal-Mart stingy with health benefits [Baltimore Sun]

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Earlier today, we gave you a rundown on Internet reaction to Wal-Mart’s support of employee-mandated health care. Well, now yet another voice has weighed in, and this one has a fairly large pedestal.

In its Opinions section, The Wall Street Journal writes that by throwing its support behind the controversial measure, Wal-Mart may have bought itself some protection by selling out its competitors in the business community.

The employer-mandate endorsement falls into the same self-interest department. A boost in the minimum wage helps Wal-Mart because most of its workers already earn well over the wage floor, and it hurts smaller, less-profitable competitors that can’t afford to pay more. On health care, an employer mandate will also reduce the margins of their rivals. This is especially true for businesses of a slightly smaller size that cannot insure on the same scale or currently don’t reach the 55% of the 1.4 million Wal-Mart employees who are insured through the company. (Another 40% or so are covered by spouses or the likes of Medicaid.)

The piece also offers more speculation as to additional motives for the move:

Businesses are going along with this and other gambits in part because of a prisoners’ dilemma: They’re terrified of being shut out of Democratic health negotiations lest they get stuck with the bill. Wal-Mart may also be trying to pre-empt an employer mandate the Senate is considering that would target companies with predominantly low-wage, low-skilled or entry-level work forces.

Everyday Low Politics [The Wall Street Journal]

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Here are what the voices on the Internet are saying about Wal-Mart’s support of employer-mandated health care...not surprisingly, it hasn’t taken long for most to deduce that Wal-Mart is hardly acting in an altruistic way.

Number one on Wal-Mart’s hit list? Easy. Target. Because small businesses would either be exempt from the mandate or face a less-strenuous requirement, it would be Wal-Mart’s large competitors (and more specifically those who have to this point been better at managing health care costs than Wal-Mart) that would feel the brunt of the hurt.

Jonathan Cohn at The New Republic:

I don’t want to make too much of this: Wal-Mart may chicken out once the specifics of an employer mandate end up on the table. Even if they don’t, they may not lift a finger to help. And, make no mistake, Wal-Mart is acting--as it always does--out of pure self-interest.

My undestanding is that, after all of these years, Wal-Mart has suddenly found itself in the same situation its competitors once did: Dealing with unpredictable health costs and facing new competition from businesses that have found ways to spend even less on employee health benefits. Is there some justice there? You bet.

Reihan Salam with the National Review:

There is another way of looking at this. As a large, powerful, deep-pocketed firm, Wal-Mart can sustain regulatory burdens that mom-and-pops and new entrants can’t. And so burdensome regulations are invariably Wal-Mart’s ally. Jonathan Rauch explained this dynamic brilliantly in his book Government’s End. It makes perfect sense for Wal-Mart to back a regulatory initiative that hurts its bottom line as long as it hurts its competitors more.

Megan McArdle for The Atlantic:

Wal-Mart is always going to have a seat at the table when employer mandates are discussed, because Wal-Mart is the nation’s largest private employer.  Target and Macy’s probably won’t have a seat at the table.  So Wal-Mart can influence the rules in ways that benefit Wal-Mart at the expense of the competition.

Jeffrey Young in The Atlantic:

Based on the axiom that nobody in business or politics acts strictly out of altruism, it’s safe to assume that Duke and Wal-Mart’s board of directors concluded that backing the employer mandate would provide the company with some kind of competitive advantage. When I originally reported the story, it wasn’t immediately clear to me what that might be, though I suspected it must have had something to do with Wal-Mart’s calculation of how much money the mandate would cost them relative to other retailers.

Michael Cannon, for the Cato Institute:

A couple of years ago, I shared a cab to the airport with a Wal-Mart lobbyist, who told me that Wal-Mart supports an “employer mandate.” An employer mandate is a legal requirement that employers provide a government-defined package of health benefits to their workers...But it all became clear when the lobbyist explained the reason for Wal-Mart’s position: “Target’s health-benefits costs are lower.”

I have no idea what Target’s or Wal-Mart’s health-benefits costs are.  Let’s say that Target spends $5,000 per worker on health benefits and Wal-Mart spends $10,000.  An employer mandate that requires both retail giants to spend $9,000 per worker would have no effect on Wal-Mart.  But it would cripple one of Wal-Mart’s chief competitors.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce, quoted nearly everywhere (here courtesy again, of Mr. Jeffrey Young):

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce took a pretty nasty swipe at Wal-Mart when I emailed them for a comment. Here’s the statement the Chamber’s press office sent me, attributed to James Gelfand, its senior manager for health policy: “Some businesses make the decision to use the government as a weapon against their competition. We do not agree with this method.” Ouch.

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For years, we’ve heard hints that Wal-Mart might support a broad-based government health care plan. Now that health care reform is on the table, Wal-Mart is coming out in force to support it. One executive even wrote an op-ed in the The Tennessean recently about how:

Everyone must have access to quality, affordable health coverage, and businesses, individuals and governments must share responsibility for financing and managing a system that ensures we meet that goal.

But as you all know, Wal-Mart could have been helping the problem all along by putting some of its multi-billion-dollar profits into its health care plan.  At Wal-Mart Watch, we’ve heard for years from Wal-Mart employees that aren’t eligible for the company plan, can’t afford it - or have been somehow shortchanged by the plan. But there’s no need to take our word for it - here’s a sampling of what we’ve heard from real employees lately.

Is Wal-Mart serious about health care reform? Let us know in the blog comments below.

Wal-Mart’s High Deductible Plans Are Only For Emergencies

I signed up for the Wal-Mart health insurance plan as soon as I was eligible, but after a few years, the price kept going UP UP UP and I had to trade down to the lower level insurance with a high deductible. Wal-Mart lies about its employees being insured under its plan. At my store, hardly anyone can afford to get the insurance. Some were on their spouse’s insurance, some did without insurance at all, and some were on Medicaid.

When I was making just over $11 an hour, my insurance went from $170 to $240 every two weeks and I had to go with the lesser insurance, which really would only cover you for a catastrophe. Let’s face it, you can’t raise a family, let alone pay for health insurance and run a used car on $9 to $15 an hour like Wal-Mart pays its employees. Since I quit, I’ve found better insurance for about the same rate as I was paying for the inferior Wal-Mart insurance.

- Anonymous in New Jersey

I have insurance through Wal-Mart. It’s not expensive - about $20.00 a month - but it has a high deductible and I can only afford to use it for emergencies. I can’t afford to buy a plan with a smaller deductible because I can’t afford to take $100.00 more out of my paycheck. Last year, they offered a plan like I have now, but with three doctors visits and a $20.00 co-pay. My 2-year-old is on state medical insurance because I can’t afford to pay the high deductible on my insurance.

- Anonymous in Louisiana

Wal-Mart Health Care is Too Expensive, Employees Forced To Find Coverage Elsewhere

While working for Wal-Mart, I had to get health care coverage through a charity program connected to the Wheaton Franciscan health care system.  They pay 100% of my bills when I got to their facilities.  Their program has literally saved my life on a couple of occasions—once through surgery on my left foot and again when I had to have surgery to remove a cancerous tumor.  Thank God for these charity programs. Even though employees give their blood, sweat and tears to Wal-Mart, they won’t do the same for you.  I had to be carried out on a stretcher with chest pains two years ago. I had a stress test, which thankfully came back negative, but I was told the chest pains were stress related. I wonder where the stress came from?

- P.F. in Wisconsin

I have worked for Wal-Mart for close to a year now and I have carefully read about all the different health plan choices they offer. To a person who makes a lot more than the average Wal-Mart employee, their plans might seem affordable.

My wife--who works for another company--makes three times more than I do and she only has to pay a fraction for comparable insurance. With over two million associates, half of them in the U.S., Wal-Mart should be able to provide much better plans than what they have now. For this reason, I’ll stick with my wife’s insurance.

- Anonymous in Illinois

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When you’re watching Wal-Mart and telling the stories of Wal-Mart workers, it’s easy to get down over the sad stories you hear every day. It’s nice to be able to share some good news every once and a while.

Remember Larry and Juanita Stuart from then-Senator Barack Obama’s campaign infomercial? The elderly couple from Sardinia, Ohio, was struggling to get by. Larry was forced to take a low-paying job at Wal-Mart, despite being long retired from a 30 years career with the B & O railroad. He didn’t have the benefits to cover the surgery Juanita needed for the painful Rheumatoid arthritis she had in her hands.

Aurthur Delaney of the Huffington Post is reporting that the Stuarts have received a gift from an anonymous donor that has allowed Juanita to get her surgery after all, relieving much of the pain. Delaney notes that life is still tough for the Stuarts - but that it has at least gotten a little better.

Although the story didn’t address it, it sounds like Larry is still working at Wal-Mart despite an urge to retire. We’re curious what work has been like for Larry after the infomercial aired.

From HuffPo:

“Someone that saw that ad, wanted to help me and so I’ve had surgery,” Stuart told the Huffington Post. “I’ve had implants in three of my fingers.”

The Stuarts’ problems haven’t gone away by any means, but the surgery provided an emotional boost.

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This week we’ve continued to hear from workers who are frustrated with their jobs at Wal-Mart. As always, we are amazed by the sheer quantity and variety that we get on a day-to-day basis. Regardless of what the mainstream media and Wal-Mart spokesmen say about the company, you can always come to this website to hear the real stories from the workers who write us.

The following comments - both from employees and non-employees - address expensive health care, wages, unions, food donations, doctor’s notes, and the lack of air conditioning—it was enough to make two workers quit this week.

A.M. from Indiana writes to us about wage discrimination and expensive health care:

In our store you only have a chance at a promotion if you kiss up to the managers. Moreover, the variance in the pay rates for the same job codes ranges about three dollars. Tell me how this is fair! Not to mention the health care issues, how can I afford daily meds for a chronic condition when my premiums are so high and my pay is so low? When I get to the pharmacy, I find that 80 percent of my prescriptions are not covered.

An anonymous worker from Pennsylvania describes an uncomfortable anti-union meeting:

I am disgusted with myself and the way in which my life has turned out since I have been employed with Wal-Mart for five years. I recently became a salaried manager because I needed the money. After four years at Wal-Mart, I had not yet worked my way up to what I had made at my previous job - a fast food franchise. You must understand, I never wanted to work for this company, but the truth is that when you are poor, you have no skills, and you have no college education, it is difficult to find a job that pays well. I expected to be poorly paid for a while. However, I had high expectation for myself and expected to move quickly through the management ranks.

Before starting with the company, I had read lots of anti-Wal-mart propaganda. I knew there were a ridiculously small number of women managers compared to males - especially when I factoring in how many more women work at Wal-Mart. I expected those challenges and I embraced them. Unfortunately, I overcame them without ever doing anything to ensure that no other deserving woman would be held back.

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Last year, Wal-Mart made a grand announcement - a plan to open hundreds of in-store medical clinics with the goal to have 400 clinics up and running by 2010. That plan crashed and burned, but from the ashes a new plan has been reborn. Behold the Wal-Mart Health Plan phoenix, reborn anew to live again.

Early last year, the company spoke of having 400 walk-in clinics by 2010. But later in 2008, that plan went into reverse. Of the 78 clinics Wal-Mart had in operation at the beginning of 2008, all but 17 were closed. Now it is rebuilding that business, this time largely in partnership with hospitals.

The timeline goes pretty much like this: Early last year, Wal-Mart announced a plan to open hundreds of in-store medical clinics, aiming to have 400 clinics up and running by 2010. That announcement came less than a month after twenty three - almost a third - of Wal-Mart’s walk-in clinics unexpectedly closed after Wal-Mart’s choice of partners (the CheckUps company) fell behind on payroll payments and other expenses. Strike one.

The CheckUps fiasco led to a partnership with RediClinics, which was going to run 200 of the 400 new units. That endeavor, however, did not end well either:

Originally, H. Lee Scott Jr., the Wal-Mart chief executive who retired this year, had assigned a big role for the clinic project to RediClinic, a privately held company backed by Steve Case, the AOL co-founder. But last December RediClinic, citing the poor economy, abruptly shut down its 15 Wal-Mart centers.

Strike two. Who would have guessed that medical clinics run by the AOL dream team would struggle? Weird.

So now Wal-Mart is hoping that the third time really is the charm - this time the retailer is moving forward largely in partnership with hospitals. Probably a wise mood, since, you know, hospitals like, take care of sick people and stuff all the time. In fact, if this goes well, I see a Grey’s Anatomy: Wal-Mart spin-off happening in the very near future.

Wal-Mart Begins to Rebuild Health Clinic Business [New York Times]

Hospitals Begin to Move Into Supermarkets [New York Times]

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COALITION OF INVESTORS SPEAKS OUT FOR EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE

• Social Investment Funds Back Labor Union Organizing Measure [Bloomberg News]
  A group of mutual and pension funds that invest in social causes is urging Congress to support legislation that would make it easier for workers to join unions.
  

• Leaders in Investment Community Speak Out for Employee Free Choice [AFL-CIO Now Blog]
  A coalition of investors, representing nearly $400 billion in assets, has stepped forward to say the Employee Free Choice Act is the right move right now to protect workers and strengthen the economy.

SEIU HEAD ANDY STERN SAYS EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE 'ALIVE AND WELL'

• Stern: 'Card Check is alive and well' [Politico]
  "Card check is alive and well," Stern said, adding of Arlen Specter, "if he’s red on card check, I couldn’t get my members to vote for him. That’s like being against universal health care."
  

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As workers continue to write to us about their experiences with Wal-Mart, we’ll continue to highlight some of the best submissions of the week. Comments this week address employee dissatisfaction with computerized scheduling as well as calls for Wal-Mart to respect its employee’s “basic human rights.”

Our first story comes from a Wal-Mart worker in California who writes to us anonymously:

“I never believed the horror stories about Wal-Mart’s treatment of their employees until I was hired - with no other job options available - as a cake decorator in 2008. Since my hire date, I have witnessed people fired for making overtime, threatened for speaking about unions, and denied the ability to miss work because of medical disabilities. Wal-Mart discriminates, threatens, and denies employees their basic human rights the minute they clock in. This needs to change. The world’s largest publicly owned corporation needs to change its ways, pay its workers more, appreciate the diversity and intelligence and beauty of its employees and customers, and stop taking advantage of these people.”

A Wal-Mart worker from Texas writes to us anonymously about scheduling:

“My husband works for Walmart. I am raging mad right now because Walmart has a new scheduling policy that will make up a person’s hours randomly. Instead of working his original schedule, my husband is now working at erratic times and can no longer pick up our son from school everyday @ 3:30. In addition, they cut his hours down from 40 to 31. They wanted to cut them down to 19.  I hear about Walmart helping communities around the country, but what about helping their own employees? This is crazy. How do they think people will survive?”

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Mike Duke held out over two full months to give his first interview as Wal-Mart CEO.

Apparently it was unannounced, but the Today Show featured a bit this morning where Matt Lauer walked with Duke through a new Wal-Mart store and tossed him some of the typical softballs. Lauer’s last question was what he thought about EFCA, and Duke (of course) towed the company line.

He said the Employee Free Choice “would be damaging to the American economy long-term.” Wal-Mart, he implied, doesn’t need unions because it has a “unique relationship with its employees.” Unique, indeed.

Here’s the full video—fast forward all the way to the end for the bit on EFCA.

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According to a new study by the Massachusetts Division of Health Care Finance and Policy, Wal-Mart, with 4,796 employees on the list, was the largest user of public health care last year. Incredibly, Wal-Mart only has 11,681 employees in the entire state, which means over 40% of its total Massachusetts workforce is on some type of public assistance. Unfortunately, this is a repeat performance for Wal-Mart, which also topped the list last year. Twenty-five states have tracked and reported on the number of employees and dependents enrolled in state-funded health care programs, and in those states Wal-Mart is at the head of the line for public assistance.

Apparently the Wal-Mart health plan is not all it’s cracked up to be, or else more employees would utilize their coverage. So when the Washington Post writes a puff piece calling Wal-Mart a health care “innovator,” what exactly do they mean by that? Wal-Mart only covers half its employees, offers expensive health care options with long wait times for eligibility, and encourages employees to use Medicaid. That doesn’t sound like a health care innovator to us.

On the next page you will find the full article, as it appears in today’s edition of the Boston Globe.

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Wal-Mart’s health care issues obviously go back quite some time. Nationally, 64% of workers in very large firms (5,000 employees or more) receive their health benefits from their employer. And Wal-Mart? Wal-Mart typically covers only 50% of its employees. Twenty-five states have tracked and reported the number of employees and dependents that the largest employers within their borders have enrolled in state-funded health care programs. Where does Wal-Mart rank in those states? Across the board Wal-Mart is at the head of the line for public assistance.

Despite these negatives, Politico says Wal-Mart is looking to throw its economic might into the health care ring:

Wal-Mart is ramping up its Washington activity to push for comprehensive health care reform, and the world’s largest retailer says it is ready to use its economic muscle to get out in front and influence the discussion.

That’s probably a good thing, as anything but the status quo would be a positive development. And we know Wal-Mart and its employees are familiar with using public health care. Michael Hicks, an economist at the Air Force Institute of Technology at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, conducted a study analyzing state Medicaid data from 1978 to 2003 - he found that Wal-Mart causes an increase in state Medicaid spending by as much as $898 per person. That sounds extreme, yet consider the example from Wal-Mart’s home state of Arkansas, where 3,971 of Wal-Mart’s 45,106 employees are on public assistance. That’s basically one in eleven employees taking advantage of public assistance, so no wonder the costs to taxpayers are high.

Still, Politico argues that Wal-Mart has made some gains recently - including offering a broader range of lower-cost insurance options and pushing for electronic health records - and notes that SEIU could be moving towards cautiously optimistic status:

“As the largest private corporation, they do have the ability to set a standard to providing good jobs with good health care,” said SEIU spokeswoman Lori Lodes. “Right now they are at the table, and they have a very strong commitment to reforming our health care system.”

Whether the reform Wal-Mart ultimately seeks ends up being a positive will remain a HUGE question mark for a while. In the meantime, Wal-Mart has announced that only 3 percent of the company’s employees are now on state assistance. So, only about 45 THOUSAND employees nationwide. So, you know...just a few.

Wal-Mart lends muscle to health reform [Politico]

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Wal-Mart and Mike Duke are making no secret that they want to be a player in the discussion over health care reform, and that they want to be viewed as a positive force in health care. For several years, Wal-Mart has been signaling support for large-scale government health care reform. Yesterday the company took its pitch directly to Congress with a full page ad in the highly influential D.C. daily, Roll Call. The ad declares support for health care reform and outlines Wal-Mart’s “health care principles”. Among them are:

Every person in America must have quality, affordable health insurance.

Businesses, individuals and government must share the responsibility for financing and managing the American health care system

It’s the same thing we’ve always said at Wal-Mart Watch. It’s great if Wal-Mart wants to encourage the government to build a better health care system, but it needs to get its own house in order first.

Wal-Mart is the single biggest private employer in the country - with over 1.4 million “associates.” And while it brags that 94% of its workers are insured, only 51.8% are on Wal-Mart’s plan. That means that almost as many workers have found a better plan somewhere else - whether it’s from the government, a spouse, or somewhere else. Those who are on the company plan are forced to live with extremely high deductibles - which is not easy on poverty-level wages.

Given its multi-billion dollar profits and the extravagant wealth of its controlling family, Wal-Mart has the singular ability to lead by example - and truly invest the necessary funds into the health of its workforce. Instead, it has chosen the path of smoke, mirrors and expensive PR.

Click here to see the the full ad from Roll Call. 

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According to the NY Times, “Wal-Mart is striding into the market for electronic health records, seeking to bring the technology into the mainstream for physicians in small offices, where most of America’s doctors practice medicine.”

Based on this Wall Street Journal story from 2006, Wal-Mart has been poking its nose into this issue for a while now. With the Obama White House trying to jump-start the adoption of digital medical records by including $19 billion of incentives in the economic stimulus package, Wal-Mart is jumping back in.

The company plans to team its Sam’s Club division with Dell for computers and eClinicalWorks, a fast-growing private company, for software. Wal-Mart says its package deal of hardware, software, installation, maintenance and training will make the technology more accessible and affordable, undercutting rival health information technology suppliers by as much as half.

There are some, especially those physicians working in smaller offices, that doubt the wisdom of switching to electronic health records because of the cost and complexity involved. The New England Journal of Medicine has noted that only 17% of physicians are using computerized patient records currently.

Wal-Mart Plans to Market Digital Health Records System [New York Times]

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On Wednesday, we shared with you some of the many health care stories we receive from employees around the country. After years of minimal changes, employees are tired of waiting for the company to do the right thing. This is a life or death issue, will the Walton family finally stop playing games and make real improvements to the health plan?

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BW in New Jersey…

I do not receive Wal-Mart health care because it is too expensive. In addition to subtracting $63 dollars from my paycheck once a month, I must pay a $350.00 deductible to the doctor.  I cannot afford this since my husband is disabled and I am the only one working.  Unfortunately, I must rely on emergency room visits when I am ill.  Therefore, I do not see the doctor unless I am very sick.

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