Lou posted: On Oct 26, 2005, at 12:43 PM, Louis Proyect wrote:
NY Times, October 26, 2005 Wal-Mart Memo Suggests Ways to Cut Employee Benefit Costs By STEVEN GREENHOUSE and MICHAEL BARBARO <http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/business/26walmart.pdf>] New York Times - October 26, 2005 Wal-Mart Memo Suggests Ways to Cut Employee Benefit Costs By STEVEN GREENHOUSE and MICHAEL BARBARO
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Ms. Chambers acknowledged that 46 percent of the children of Wal- Mart's 1.33 million United States employees were uninsured or on Medicaid.
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Under fire because less than 45 percent of its workers receive company health insurance, Wal-Mart announced a new plan on Monday that seeks to increase participation by allowing some employees to pay just $11 a month in premiums. Some health experts praised the plan for making coverage more affordable, but others criticized it, noting that full-time Wal-Mart employees, who earn on average around $17,500 a year, could face out-of-pocket expenses of $2,500 a year or more.
"Data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Surveys show . . . that poor adult Medicaid beneficiaries paid an average of $210 in 2002 for out- of-pocket medical expenses.[7] Non-low-income adults with private insurance paid an average of $548" (Leighton Ku and Matthew Broaddus, "Out-of-Pocket Medical Expenses for Medicaid Beneficiaries Are Substantial and Growing," <http://www.cbpp.org/5-31-05health.htm>, May 31, 2005). Wouldn't unions that specialize in organizing low-wage workers like Wal-Mart workers be better off if they helped all poor to sign up for and defend Medicaid (in the short term), fought like hell for publicly-funded universal health care (in the medium term), and focused organizing and bargaining efforts on other issues like wages, hours, conditions, and dignity (always)? Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org> * Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: <http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/07/mahmoud- ahmadinejads-face.html>; <http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/07/chvez- congratulates-ahmadinejad.html>; <http://montages.blogspot.com/ 2005/06/iranian-working-class-rejects.html>
