Wal-Mart, the largest employer in America, is using its economic power to force taxpayers to pay for costs every other large company in the US pays for. They are using the savings to increase the profits to their shareholders. According to Wal-Mart’s latest annual report , their own website, and SEC filings, Wal-Mart is the world’s largest retailer ($285 Billion in sales) and the largest employer in the US (1.6 million employees around the world). They account for 3% of global retail sales and they are immensely profitable. Said their President to their shareholders, “Our fiscal year ending January 31, 2005 was another record year for Wal-Mart. We topped $10 Billion in net income for the first time in our history and added almost $29 Billion in sales.” The results were so good they increased their dividends to shareholders and gave their President a $4 million bonus. So Wal-Mart isn’t hurting.

Wal-Mart’s average wage is $9.68 an hour. That’s $19,300 a year, $1,600 a month. And that’s the average, many make less. The result is that many of Wal-Mart’s 1.3 million US employees live below the poverty line and many are eligable for Medicaid, the state programs that provide healthcare to the indigent. The result is that state governments around the US are having to pay for the cost of healthcare for an employer who last year made $10 Billion in profits. And who paid the bill? The taxpayers, of course. This is going to become a big scandal as more and more states wake up to what’s happening.

In Georgia, 10,000 children of Wal-Mart employees were in the states’s Medicaid program. The same report identified a hospital in North Carolina where “31 percent of its 1,900 patients were Wal-Mart employees on Medicaid, and an additional 16 percent were Wal-Mart employees with no insurance at all.” And in California the University of California at Berkley reported that “the healthcare expenses of uninsured Wal-Mart employees were costing the already economically-strapped state $32 million a year in taxpayer funds.” A TV station in Des Moines found the same thing in Iowa. In Alabama 3,864 children of Wal-Mart employees have cost the state as much as $8.2 million. In Florida, 12,300 Wal-Mart workers are eligible for Medicaid and 29,900 Wal-Mart employees and dependents have enrolled in Medicaid. There have been similar findings in West Virginia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Washington State and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

How have the states reacted? The New York Times reported on 5/6/05 that Maryland recently passed a bill requiring employers to spend at least 8 percent of their payroll on healthcare benefits. Connecticut is considering the same. Massachusetts and Colorado are considering tracking and publishing the names of employers whose employees’ healthcare is being paid by taxpayers.

The public policy issue is straightforward. Should a company like Wal-Mart, who is wildly successful by any measure, have the right to force many of their employees to look to Medicaid for their healthcare? I can’t think of a single reason that Wal-Mart could use to justify their policy. It’s greed, pure and simple. The largest emplyer on earth is forcing individuals to live below the poverty line just because they can.

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