Sunday, October 31, 2004

Walmart to Blame for Health Care?

Critics have found another problem to blame on Wal-Mart, the country's largest employer. An abundance of Wal-Mart employees have been found to not be under health care or to be on Medicaid. The reason many of the employees are uninsured is because Wal-Mart either makes the eligibilty requirements too hard to meet, or because they made the monthly premiums too high for the average family to afford. Although Wal-Mart is being blamed for causing so many employees to go without insurance, they advertise themselves as a company that helps their employees out. Recently, Wal-Mart has run a television ad with a man claiming that his son survived because of Wal-Mart's health benefits. Is Wal-Mart really the cause of an abundance of employees being uninsured, or are the critics trying to blame Wal-Mart for yet another wrong doing?

1 comment:

Greg Delemeester said...

Is Walmart in the business of providing healthcare? Last time I checked, Walmart sold a lot of stuff ranging from socks to cabbage to aspirin to oil changes for your car, but they do not provide healthcare directly. Walmart is a retailer employing over 1.2 million workers throughout the US (and elsewhere). Walmart, I imagine, must compete with other employers in hiring workers to fill its positions. In order to attract workers, Walmart must offer a compensation package that is "competitive." Compensation comes in different forms: wages, benefits, and working conditions, to name a few. If Walmart were forced to raise the amount of healthcare it provides its workers, they might have to reduce other components of the compensation package. Is this a good thing? There ain't no such thing as free healthcare!

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