Fair Share Legislation .... Wal-Mart and Medicaid
- From: Joel344 <joeleichen@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2006 13:19:27 GMT
From this morning's Inquirer:
[image:
http://www.philly.com/images/philly/inquirer/13997/195928325360.jpg]
Posted on Thu, Mar. 02, 2006
Many Wal-Mart workers use Medicaid
By Amy WordenInquirer Harrisburg BureauHARRISBURG -
Of Pennsylvania's 10 largest employers, Wal-Mart has the highest
percentage of employees enrolled in the state medical assistance
program for the poor and disabled.
About one in six of Wal-Mart's 48,000 employees are enrolled in the
Medicaid insurance program, at a total cost to the state of more than
$15 million a year, according to state data.
The retailers with the second- and third-largest numbers of employees
in the state, Giant Food Stores L.L.C. and Weis Markets Inc., have a
roughly similar ratio of workers on Medicaid. By contrast, UPS, the
state's fourth-largest private employer, has one in 17.5 workers on
Medicaid.
These figures, provided to The Inquirer by the Department of Public
Welfare at the newspaper's request, reflect full- and part-time
workers. The agency did not issue figures for employees' dependents on
Medicaid, which would likely significantly increase the number of the
program's recipients and its costs.
The data will add fuel to the debate, which may be part of today's
budget hearing in Harrisburg, over whether too many employees at the
nation's largest retailer are relying on public assistance.
State Rep. Jake Wheatley (D., Allegheny) said yesterday he would ask
the state Department of Public Welfare today to investigate whether
corporations are abusing the tax-funded Medicaid program.
"We need to protect taxpayers from subsidizing large corporations that
can afford to provide health care to their employees," Wheatley said in
a statement.
A spokeswoman for Wal-Mart Stores Inc. yesterday defended the company's
benefits plan as one that has "helped thousands of Americans on public
assistance gain access to private health care."
Kelly Hobbs said the company had recently announced a health-care
program that is more affordable and reduces the wait for eligibility.
Hobbs also questioned the department's release to The Inquirer of what
she termed partial data, saying any state report on Medicaid recipients
should include all employers, both governmental and private.
Wal-Mart, with 1.3 million employees in the United States, reported
revenue of $316 billion and profit of $11.2 billion in its latest
fiscal year.
Public-assistance rolls
Advocates for low-wage workers say the Pennsylvania figures reflect a
national trend in "corporate welfare," as more private companies - many
of them nonunion - reduce benefits to reduce costs, forcing workers onto
public-assistance rolls.
"Wal-Mart is making billions in profits, while pushing people onto
medical assistance at a time when 100,000 people in Pennsylvania were
in jeopardy of losing benefits," said Jonathan Stein, general counsel
at Community Legal Services in Philadelphia. "The situation only makes
life difficult for other poor people who could only look to Medicaid."
Swelling state medical assistance rolls and higher health-care costs
compelled Gov. Rendell last year to limit some services and increase
some fees for many of the 1.8 million Pennsylvanians on medical
assistance.
Wal-Mart, the largest employer in the state, has a total of 7,577 of
its employees, or 15.8 percent, on medical assistance in Pennsylvania.
The company's workforce is more than double the number of workers at
the next-largest retailer, Giant Food.
Of Giant's 19,000-member workforce, 2,244 employees, or 11.8 percent,
are on public assistance, according to the welfare department.
Competitive benefits
A Giant spokeswoman said yesterday she had no way of verifying the
information provided by the state but said that the company offered
"competitive" wages and benefits.
"We feel good that we make health-care coverage available to our
associates, full and part-time," spokeswoman Tracy Pawelski said.
Of the 14,000 employees at Weis, 13.4 percent receive public medical
assistance.
The data reflect the number of workers who were enrolled in the state
medical assistance program between July and September 2005.
Agency researchers matched a file of wage information from the
Department of Labor and Industry with active Medicaid recipients for
that same time period. The agency said the workers were both full-time
or part-time, an official said.
The data do not include the number of dependents enrolled in the
state's children's health-insurance program and do not include other
benefits, such as food stamps, which have increased the numbers and
overall costs in other states.
Rep. Wheatley is the lead sponsor of a bill that would require the
welfare department to report annually on the number of people on
Medicaid who are employees of businesses with 20 or more workers. But
the bill, introduced last year, has stalled in committee.
In New Jersey, a similar bill, which would track the employers of
residents receiving state FamilyCare health-insurance benefits,
recently passed the Senate. An unofficial study of FamilyCare
recipients found that Wal-Mart led all other New Jersey employers, with
589 employees and their children on the rolls.
Fewer than 60 percent of large employers now provide health-care
coverage for their workers, according to a recent Kaiser Family
Foundation survey. In the decades after World War II, Pennsylvania's
largest employers, U.S. Steel and Bethlehem Steel, provided full
benefits and pensions to their unionized employees.
In Maryland, a new law, aimed at Wal-Mart, requires that employers with
more than 10,000 workers spend 8 percent of their labor costs on
employee health benefits. The legislation was highly controversial and
survived a gubernatorial veto to become law.
Proponents are pushing similar "fair-share" legislation in at least 30
other states, including Pennsylvania, where House Minority Whip Mike
Veon (D., Beaver) said he intended to introduce a Maryland-style bill
soon.
Earlier this week, Wal-Mart chief executive officer Lee Scott appealed
to the nation's governors not to sign legislation like the Maryland
bill, saying that forcing companies to spend an arbitrary percentage on
health care discourages low-cost, quality health care.
While Rendell has said he does not support such a bill, his top policy
adviser said the administration is exploring other options, among them
requiring large employers who cannot cover the health-care costs for
all their employees to pay an assessment to the state.
"These programs were never intended to cover people who are gainfully
employed," said Donna Cooper, secretary of policy of planning. "But
this is a national problem, and part of the national solution has to be
keeping these employers at the table paying for health care."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contact staff writer Amy Worden at 717-783-2584 or
aworden@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Inquirer staff writer Bob Fernandez contributed
to this article.
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