Liberals will be outraged at the big corporation – Wal-Mart. They would prefer that Wal-Mart swallow the huge increase in healthcare costs caused by Obamacare and just pass the cost along to you the taxpayer through higher prices. That’s not how it works in a capitalistic system. If the government chooses to socialize healthcare and drive prices up, companies will hire less workers, fire existing workers, pass the increases along to employees, shift to part-time workers, and/or increase prices to customers. Thank you Obama. I’m still waiting for my $2,500 annual savings from Obamacare. I guess the check is in the mail.
Walmart Ends Healthcare Benefits For Workers Under 30 Hours
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/07/2014 10:43 -0400
Under the title (only-a-PR-person-could-make-up) “Providing Quality Benefits for Our Associates,” Walmart – who employs 1.3 million people in America, has changed its eligibility standards for healthcare benefits. “Like every company,” they explain “Walmart faces rising healthcare costs,” and so are ending benefits for associates who work less than 30 hours a week.
In the U.S., the 1.3 million people who work at our stores, clubs and distribution centers are vital to a great experience for the 140 million customers shopping with us each week. We’re in business because our associates bring us their unique skills and talents – and so we do our absolute best to offer all the benefits that come with a great job, particularly affordable health insurance.
Anyone who has been following the news for the last several years knows that health care is a major topic of debate. From doctors’ visits and prescriptions to insurance premiums, health care costs have increased for all of us – individuals and the companies that insure them – each year. Knowing this, Walmart continues to work with health care providers and professionals, using our size and influence to negotiate the best rates and options for our associates.
Like every company, Walmart continues to face rising health care costs. This year, the expenses were significant and led us to make some tough decisions as we begin our annual enrollment. As a result, today we announced that our associates will see an increase in premiums for 2015. For example, our most popular and lowest cost associate-only plan will increase by $3.50 to $21.90 per pay period – still half the average premium other retail employees pay.
We’re also changing eligibility for some part-time associates. We will continue to provide affordable health care to all eligible associates, including part-time, who work more than 30 hours. However, similar to other retailers like Target, Home Depot, Walgreens and Trader Joe’s, we will no longer be providing health benefits to part-time associates who work less than 30 hours. This will impact about 2% of our total U.S. workforce. We will be working with a specialist, HealthCompare, to personally guide our associates through the process of finding the right, affordable health care.
We are proud of the health care plans we offer, which are among the best in the retail industry, as well as the new benefits we’ve introduced over the past two years for our associates. This includes a vision plan that launched this year and our innovative Centers of Excellence program that began in 2013 that covers select spine and heart procedures at no cost to our associates. We expanded Centers of Excellence this year to include knee and hip replacement surgeries and, for 2015, we’re excited to be adding breast, lung and colorectal cancer care at the Mayo Clinic.
We don’t make these decisions lightly, and the fact remains that our plans exceed those of our peers in the retail industry. Our premiums remain well below the industry average compiled by expert Aon Hewitt. We also continue to pay the majority of health care costs for associates covered under our medical plans. For example, on average we cover more than 60% of our associates’ total health care costs and more than 75% of their premium costs. In contrast, the retail industry pays, on average, about 54% of total health care costs and 68% of employee premiums.
All of our eligible associates – both full and part-time – will continue to benefit from our health care options that include no lifetime maximum, preventative care covered at 100%, and $250 up to $1,000 to help pay for medical expenses. We believe these options are among the best in the retail industry.
As our associates continue to work hard for our customers, we will continue working hard to keep their benefits as affordable as possible, enhance the quality of health care they receive and make the cost more transparent, which will benefit everyone.
* * *
We suspect the refrain from the American taxpayer will go something like “thanks Obamacare, you’re welcome Walmart.”
I’m sure there will continue to be multiple applicants for any open part-time position at any Walmart store irrespective of whether or not “sick-care” benefits are provided. Stand with Rand and BC-LR to all
Hey… just a question fielded to TBP readership…
Obongo-care is driving up the cost of health care… and so employers are doing all those things that are in the lead-in to the article… firing employees, shifting to part time employees, etc…
Has anyone thought to put the bug in the ear of these huge corporations to develop their own corporate health care for their own employees? Actually employ their own doctors, etc, with their own dedicated facilities…
Just a “why not”? type of thing… it’s not like Wally World doesn’t have the bucks to do it, either… just a matter if it will be more cost effective than knuckling under to Obongo-care…
@Billy, you would still need to have policies covering catastrophic illness/injury, those policies were made ILLEGAL.
Also, just why in the HELL can Wally get away with this?
The law says ALL employees must have coverage, not just all full-time, if you are a more than 10 person company.
I’m pretty sure they are.
And bull-fucking-shit it only affects 2% of their employees. When 90+% of all stores staff is part-time.
Lies, bullshit, lies, bullshit, exemptions.
Mr. Walton must be proud of what his family has created, the lives destroyed, the country smoking around them. So. Very. Proud.
Hey Billah
That’s a great idea. I jes gave you a thumbs up fer that.
Nothing new… WM was one of the major employers who obtained an “exemption” for the first year of Obamacare. They’re just making it official now, rather than getting a go-by under the radar.
The government’s plan all along was to go to a single-payer system. They’re the ones making it difficult on companies to provide coverage, and so companies are increasingly putting people into the exchanges, especially if they’re not full-time employees. After all, companies are NOT required to provide health insurance… citizens are, however, required to have it or face a fine, thus forcing them to buy on the exchanges. We’ll see more of this until the system collapses and the government finally can get its wish — nationalized healthcare, paid for by the government, with all its rationing, denial of service and substandard care that clearly happens, as seen with similar systems in other countries.
Billy, good suggestion, but I’m guessing a company would be heavily disincentivized by the government to provide their own. Still, it’s worth looking into…
@Thinker and Billy, HOW could they afford to pay for it? One major cancer and months worth of premium savings dissolve.
Most self-insured – which, btw, has been a thing for decades – have collapsed under the sheer insanity of cost and paradigm in America.
You can’t make a single payer omelet without breaking a few million eggs, or opportunities.
The company store worked out so well, having a company doctor can’t fail.
“The company store worked out so well, having a company doctor can’t fail.” – Captain Obfuscation
Neglected to say that those who shopped at the ‘company store’ HAD to shop there because they were paid in company script, NOT American currency or money… they literally could not shop anywhere else because “anywhere else” wouldn’t accept company script as legal tender…
Why don’t you tell the other side of the story, Captain?
Oh wait… that’s right. Actually telling the whole truth would undermine your efforts at making me look bad and attacking me at every opportunity…
TE,
Hey, it’s just an idea… have a doctor or LPN/RN or whomever to deal with the every day bumps/bruises/sniffles, etc… Not saying one in every store. But one or two for several stores? Why not? Anything to derail and fuck with the Obongo-care agenda and make it fail…
As far as stuff like treatment for cancer, etc, I haven’t worked that out yet… I don’t get paid to count beans, ya know.
L.A.-area restaurants adding healthcare surcharge to cover workers
October 6, 2014, 7:12 PM
Diners are discovering an unfamiliar new item when the bill comes for the truffled lobster Bolognese at Melisse and for the crunchy Spanish fried chicken and waffles at AOC — a 3% surcharge for employees’ medical insurance..
The charge first appeared at one Los Angeles-area restaurant late last year; by early September, more than a dozen mainly high-end eateries followed suit. The added cost has given some diners heartburn and thrust the restaurants’ owners unwillingly into the debate over the Affordable Care Act.
The healthcare surcharge, the restaurant owners insist, isn’t a political statement, but a way to offer valuable benefits to employees while maintaining their profits, which are slim even at the most successful establishments.
“I’m really excited about having insurance again. There is no way I can pay for those things out of pocket.”- Sarah Huxhold, server at Milo & Olive in Santa Monica
“We want our staff to have healthcare,” said Josh Loeb, the co-owner of popular dining spots including Milo & Olive and Rustic Canyon. “It’s not because we support Obama or don’t support Obama, or are Democrats or are not Democrats.”
The Los Angeles-area restaurants aren’t the first to charge customers to cover healthcare.
After San Francisco implemented a healthcare mandate in 2008, many restaurants there adopted a surcharge to cover the cost of health insurance for employees.
Last December, Los Angeles restaurateur Bill Chait made a splash by introducing a 3% “Healthy LA” charge at his French restaurant Republique on South La Brea Avenue.
Loeb said he was inspired by the Northern California pioneers and emailed a group of “like-minded” restaurant owners earlier this year to see whether they could plan a course of action together. The owners he reached out to, Loeb said, all run high-quality spots with many of the same clientele.
l Related LocalL.A. business groups fear another defeat over minimum wage hikeSee all relatedí
Among those on the list: Caroline Styne and Suzanne Goin of Lucques, Tavern and AOC; Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo of Son of a Gun and Animal; and David Lentz of the Hungry Cat restaurants.
Many of the restaurant owners said they had been mulling over providing health insurance for years. They took the plunge after watching the Affordable Care Act pass and seeing other businesses find ways to offer healthcare for their employees.
“We decided it would be a good thing to do it as a group,” said Josiah Citrin, the chef-owner of Melisse in Santa Monica. “Usually when lots of people do things it’s easier to make change.”
Citrin joined in even though Melisse doesn’t have enough workers to fall under the employer mandate that starts in 2016. That provision of the act requires businesses with more than 50 full-time workers to provide health insurance. The coverage will be a particular boon to longtime employees who are getting older, he said.
Younger restaurant workers such as Sarah Huxhold are also cheering the surcharge.
Huxhold, a 31-year-old server at Milo & Olive in Santa Monica, said she lost her insurance through work last year after quitting to pursue a career in music. While out of work, her mom helped her buy coverage for about $500 a month, but Huxhold decided it was too expensive and dropped the plan in December.
Since then, the Baldwin Hills resident said she has tried unsuccessfully to get insurance through Medi-Cal. She’s been forced to scour Groupon for a deal on eye exams and pinned her glasses together to avoid getting a new pair.
Now that she will have insurance, she plans to get an annual physical and visit the dentist and optometrist.
“I’m really excited about having insurance again,” Huxhold said. “There is no way I can pay for those things out of pocket.”
But restaurants face an uphill battle to explain the surcharge to confused customers such as Bruce Morman.
The Hancock Park architect, a fan of fine dining, said he doesn’t mind paying a few extra dollars to provide healthcare to restaurant workers. But he doesn’t want to see an extra line on his bill or have a conversation with his waiter about health insurance. The 53-year-old said he’d prefer to have that cost built into menu prices.
“It should be seamless,” Morman said. “I don’t want to think about it.”
Online reviewers have been more blunt. On Yelp, some diners have called the fee crazy, cheap and tacky. “It’s basically management saying ‘Obamacare made me do it,’ ” one reviewer wrote. “If you want to offset costs try turning up the thermostat. There’s your 3%! Now please pay your workers’ health insurance, and hush.”
The restaurants say increasing menu prices is not as effective as a surcharge.
Costs such as rent and liability insurance often are calculated as a percentage of revenue, so prices would have to be bumped up higher than 3% to raise the same amount as a surcharge, they said.
“Once it starts you are going to see other segments in the industry . . . dip their toe in. If they see it’s manageable and customers do not revolt.”- Jot Condie, chief executive of the California Restaurant Assn.
Restaurants on average make only 5 cents profit for every dollar of revenue, because they are labor-intensive businesses with high costs, said Styne of AOC, Lucques and Tavern.
“There is a misconception out there that the restaurants are reaping such high profits that we should just take less profit,” she said. “Many months, no matter how busy the restaurants may be, they can actually be running at a loss.”
Chait, managing partner of Republique, Petty Cash, Bestia and other L.A. hot spots, said a big motivator for providing healthcare was smoothing out pay inequality between employees who serve customers and the cooks, Chait said.
California’s long-standing gratuity law bars cooks and back-of-the-house staff from sharing in tips. With tips, some of his servers can make as much as $80,000 a year, vastly outstripping the
amounts earned by those who toil in the kitchen.
Son of a Gun and Animal have debated rolling out an all-inclusive service fee — which would replace the tip and cover healthcare costs — after signing up workers for insurance this fall, said Helen Johannesen, director of operations. Chait said the restaurant he is working on opening next year at the Broad contemporary art museum will nix tipping as well.
Jot Condie, chief executive of the California Restaurant Assn., said he doubted that a healthcare surcharge would be widely adopted but added that more restaurants might go for an all-inclusive service fee.
“Once it starts you are going to see other segments in the industry, whether coffee shops or ice cream shops, dip their toe in,” Condie said. “If they see it’s manageable and customers do not revolt.”
So far, the restaurant owners say the reception from customers has been mostly positive — although a few have grumbled.
Loeb said just a handful of people have asked for the new fee to be taken off their bill.
One diner, according to Loeb, said: “We’re from the South, and we don’t believe in universal healthcare.”
TE, Billy’s idea would involve bypassing the “paradigm in America” — that is, have your own doctors, clinics, everything. It’s the only way it would even be possible… self-insure and self-provide. Bypass a system that charges outrageous fees from the insured to pay for the uninsured. Handle your own legal / malpractice insurance. Incentivize your workforce to remain healthy (the only way these things work) so that the need to cover chronic illnesses is reduced to a minimum. THIS is where the government would undoubtedly put a stop to it, by forcing a company to drop any “bias” in hiring based on physical exams, health records, etc.
But if any company could pull it off, it would be a company like Walmart, with one of the biggest workforces in the world, exceptional logistics capabilities and the sheer $$$ to make it happen.
BILLY SECOND WIFE SAYS TO BILLY FIRST WIFE,you stupid bitch,leave billy alone.You had your chance now he is my sweetie pie.
Maybe not a store doctor but in some parts of Florida a group of docs got together and started their own system. Doubt it would ever catch on………….
$29.00 per month gets you:
Cost of 2 visits spread over 12 months
Physician house call within 2 hours
Available 24 hours a day, after hours fee waived
2 doctor house calls per year
$49.00 per month:
Cost of 4 visits spread over 12 months
Physician house call within 2 hours
Available 24 hours a day, after hours fee waived
4 doctor house calls per year for member and any children in household under 18
Or $199 on demand
Pay as you go; no monthly fee
Physician house call within 2 hours
Available 24 hours a day*
The logical thing for a company with more than 49 employees to do is:
1) limit people to 29 hours if possible
2) pay the $2,000 fine per employee to skip providing insurance. Fuck it.
Iska, those are the rules the gov created, who wants to bet very soon those rules will be revised.
We’re fucked no mater what, embrace the doom.
How ironic …the most subsidized corporation in America is doesn’t want to subsidize the healthcare of their own employees.It is better to receive than give,at least for Wal-mart..
How Wal-Mart Has Used Public Money in Your State
A secret behind Wal-Mart’s rapid expansion in the United States has been its extensive use of public money. This includes more than $1.2 billion in tax breaks, free land, infrastructure assistance, low-cost financing and outright grants from state and local governments around the country. In addition, taxpayers indirectly subsidize the company by paying the healthcare costs of Wal-Mart employees who don’t receive coverage on the job and instead turn to public programs such as Medicaid. This website brings together available information on both kinds of subsidies involved in Wal-Mart’s “double-dipping.” In the future we will add data on other ways Wal-Mart relies on taxpayers to finance its growth.
This site is in no way connected with Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. or any affiliate of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
http://www.walmartsubsidywatch.org/
Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) and the Walton family are the beneficiaries of tax breaks and subsidies estimated at more than $7.8 billion per year, according to Americans for Tax Fairness, a coalition of 400 organizations that strive for tax reform. Wal-Mart receives an estimated $6.2 billion annually from federal taxpayer subsidies, such as Section 8 Housing Program, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and Medicaid. Another $1 billion is the result of Wal-Mart using tax breaks and loopholes to write off capital investments. The Waltons, America’s wealthiest family, also avoid an estimated $607 million in federal taxes each year through lower tax rates on capital gains.
http://wallstcheatsheet.com/business/is-wal-mart-the-welfare-queen-of-corporate-america.html/
Thanks for backing my play, Thinkster…
All’s I did was ask myself “Well, why the hell should they even have to deal with a rigged system? Walmart has more resources than Gawd… just make another system, just for you and your people and go around the stinkin’ problem…”
You fleshed it out better than I could have…
Thanks.
Praise be to Obola, Free health care for all is the best thing the government has done since affirmative action. (Which is where the doctors and nurses will come from at the government clinics). We can look forward to quality health care similar to what Native Americans get on the reservations. Check out their mortality and morbidity sometime. It isn’t that good. Did I mention that it is free?
Perhaps Obola will take a WM executive or two out behind the woodshed.
TE – I do not think part-time workers are covered under Obamacare. Also, I believe that you only have to cover 95% of your full-timers.
If you like your plan – tough shit.
If you like your doctor – tough shit.
@Billy — your suggestion is called “captive insurance” and it has been discussed as a solution to offset rising healthcare insurance costs:
Captive insurance is like an “in-house” benefits plan to cover the assets and risks of a company. It was initially intended as a cost-savings tool by which large corporations could get coverage for operations and liabilities that would have resulted in higher premiums had they sought coverage from traditional insurance companies.
See more here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/bmoharrisbank/2013/01/28/why-companies-are-opting-for-captive-insurance-arrangements/
I think the issues that will come up is:
1) a majority of Americans are unhealthy — no matter how you cut it, there will be plenty of whale-sized anchors pulling down the rest of the participants and causing everyone to drown in the pool
2) insurance divorces action from consequence, and we have seen how well that works
So no matter how you choose to slice that very expensive medical expense pie, you will always find there is not enough to go around without bankrupting someone.
The goal of Obamacare is to do to everyone below the 0.1% the same thing as the FASFA does to middle income parents sending Junior to Fornicate U.
The FASFA basically says, “What do you have, and what do you own?”
It then tells you that if you’re not already DIRT POOR that you can get all the loans you want to send your kid to college. Just pawn the house and borrow on the retirement plan.
O-care does the same thing.
What do you have? Oh, you’re not indigent? That’ll be $10,000/yr/person for “insurance” that has a $9K deductible.
If you are sick or injured, after we take ALL YOUR MONEY and make you indigent, THEN the government will subsidize you.
The goal is to make everyone who is not RICH, POOR!
dc, You just nailed it! All they want is all you have. And once everyone has nothing, then we’re all supplicants to the government. The only way to win with FAFSA is to never save a penny. The only way to win with Obamacare is to not earn too much.
mabuk, to the extent that employers remain involved in paying for prepaid medical services (as you note, “insurance” of the sort we have now is not insurance at all) they will become even more invasive regarding employee’s lives.
Employers are forcing employees into all sorts of disease management programs as we speak. Exercise programs for those with BMI’s above a certain point. Smoking cessation programs. All sorts of “do this or we may fire you” kinds of things.
Either the future is O-care (and companies all dump their involvement with “medical insurance,”) O-care fails and we get a National Health Service, or who knows what?
Freedom, lower taxes and a market economy in medical services is NOT on the menu.
Billy
Not a dumb idea at all and it has been done. Look up the history of Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and it’s founding by Industrialist Henry J Kaiser.
Kaiser Permanente is the name of the Health plan and Kaiser Permanente is the name of the cement manufacturing plant in the hills above Cupertino California.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiser_Permanente
@dc.sunsets:
“Employers are forcing employees into all sorts of disease management programs as we speak. Exercise programs for those with BMI’s above a certain point. Smoking cessation programs. All sorts of “do this or we may fire you” kinds of things.”
Precisely, just a further extension of your article a few days ago regarding the thought police patrolling the hallways and water coolers within the rotting carcass of Corporate America: if they can control your thoughts inside the office, *and* you have no right to a private persona separate from your work persona, then it is easy to believe that the those requiring the job and willing to put up with that life will simply self-regulate to compliance. Over the long term, those businesses that expend limited resources on ever-expanding tertiary topics in pursuit of some sort of quasi-religious purification will decline and falter.
Diversity in the current Orwellian context is reduced to the freedom of anyone to accept a single truth. Many middle-aged white men find themselves, much like Winston Smith as he was asked how many fingers were being held up, simply pleading for an acceptable answer so they can be allowed to continue to survive within this current wood-chipper of a system.
@mabuk
Sad it is, when I now remember *fondly* the times when all Johnson & Johnson tried to do was compel employees to “voluntarily” contribute to United Way.
My wife’s employer had a 3rd party firm push employees into “goal setting” for exercise plans and other “health related” private activities. The information collected was as invasive as is the typical “free game” available for download on your smartphone. My wife opted out…but the next step is certain to be “if you opt out, you pay more.”
As you allude, the way “they get us” is to make it an economic decision. If you want to be able to earn a living, you have to think what you’re told to think.
Not even the USSR under Stalin was so invasive as to attempt to coerce Soviet citizens’ thoughts.
1. No need to “microchip” people when it has become a fact of life for each of us to drag a GPS locator around with us 24 hours a day, one “they” log in a database permanently. If you look at the access most apps “require” on your phone, you’ll discover multiple entities with the ability to surreptitiously use your phone as a listening device. Comcast.net’s email app wanted the ability to send texts from YOUR phone, redirect calls from and to it, etc., etc.. CRAZY!
If private firms are that bad, imagine what is on your phone courtesy of Uncle Sam’s lunatic control freaks.
2. You want to drive around No. IL, you can either carry an RFID transmitter in your car for the tolls (which of course logs your car’s time and place) or you can pay DOUBLE in cash.
These are but the first of many, many, many ways American citizens are moving from occult cattle to overt cattle. Farmers tag the ears of their livestock NOT for the benefit of the livestock.
@mabuk
You must be brilliant because I agree with everything you’ve written above. (grin)
@dc.sunsets
I could say the same, but maybe I haven’t spoken enough, as I am sure I will say something completely idiotic at which point I expect TBP monkeys will come out and attack.
You mentioned Northern Illinois, coincidentally that is where I grew up and lived many years. I remember how the federal government forcing Wisconsin, the last holdout with 18 as a drinking age, to raise it to 21 by withholding highway funds until they toed the line. I remember the promises made when Illinois passed the mandatory automobile insurance law, and the promises of how prices would gravitate downward (hint: they raised immediately and never came back down again). I remember the corruption from Chicago to Springfield that still runs like a ribbon of fat through the state.
I recall those innocuous RFID systems for the tolls that you mentioned, the tracking records subpoenaed for a divorce case to prove a philandering husband in a case in the early 2000’s, and I remember realizing that the technology was probably always intended for dual-use by the gov’t. When you gaze into the device, the device gazes back into you. For a technology professional like myself, was akin to waking up beside a long-time lover and finding out it is your sister. I admit I was even surprised by some of the revelations since, based on the depth and volume of crimes committed to prevent crime — but I genuinely have been more surprised by the inert response to it all. Society abdicates their responsibility to protest and instead rolls over awaiting a good scratching on the belly from their master, acting out some sort of large-scale Milgram experiment involuntarily attacking their fellow victims.