Today the Maryland State Senate (30-17) and House of Delegates (88-50, at just after 7 pm Eastern) voted to override Republican Governor Robert Ehrlich's veto of the"Wal-Mart bill" [SB 790, HB 1284] which "requir[es] companies with more than 10,000 employees in the state to pay a set amount of money for health-care benefits." A veto override requires a three-fifths vote, and 85 House of Delegates votes were needed.
The primary argument against the bill is that it will hurt jobs. The Wall Street Journal reports that only four companies would be affected by the bill: Giant Food LLC, Johns Hopkins University, Northrop Grumman Corp. and Wal-Mart. However, according to Bloomberg, Wal-Mart is the only company currently not meeting the minimum threshold:
The legislation, called the Fair Share Health Care Fund Act, requires large companies to devote at least 8 percent of their payroll to health care and would become the first U.S. state law of its kind. Wal-Mart employs almost 17,000 people in Maryland and is the only company there known not to meet the bill's requirements.
The larger issue facing Maryland and other states is the cost of health care — and the pressure on taxpayers to subsidize
the cost of health care for its citizens not covered by an employer-paid-plan. The Wall Street Journal reports that six other states are considering similiar legislationm including Massachusetts and Illinois. If companies do not meet the minimum allocation, they must make up the difference in taxes.
In floor arguments, one assemblyman related the story of a constituent who works for Wal-Mart, making about $400 a month. The insurance plan offered this worker cost $200 a month. Another noted that Maryland citizens are subsidizing the largest retailer on the planet through public health care support; he noted that competitors like Giant and Safeway will have no choice but to reduce their health care plans. Yet another said the bill was designed to simply beat business over the head.
According to UFCW, "More than 60 percent of Wal-Mart employees — 600,000 people — are forced to get health insurance coverage from the government or through spouses’ plans—or live without any health insurance." Nationally, 67 percent of employees have insurance provided by their employer; for Wal-Mart, the percentage is only 47 percent. Other data:
- In Alabama, 3,864 children of Wal-Mart employees cost state taxpayers between $5.8 million and $8.2 million for on Medicaid coverage.
- In California, Wal-Mart workers rely on the state taxpayers for about $32 million annually in health-related services.
- In Tennessee, almost 10,000 Wal-Mart employees are on the state’s expanded Medicaid program.
- In Georgia, more than 10,261 children of Wal-Mart employees are enrolled in the state’s PeachCare program for health insurance for families meeting federal poverty criteria.
The Wall Street Journal asked law professor Paul Secunda for this analysis. He believes federal law could preempt the state action if Wal-Mart self-insures because "the deemer clause should lead to ERISA preemption of the state law; if not (that is, it insures its health plans through another company), it should be saved from ERISA preemption as a law that regulates insurance under ERISA's Savings Clause."
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Article comments
1 - RedTard
Great job! Another attempt by liberals to destroy a successful American business.
2 - Scott Butki
Hi Kathy. Looks like we both covered this story about Maryland's vote though I thought the judge's decision this week was also interesting about what is to come.
My piece
is here
3 - Nancy
Walmart has been convicted of so much chicanery as far as ethics & business practices go (discrimination, hiring illegal immigrants but trying to pass them off as subcontractors, forcing employees to work unpaid overtime, owning substantial interests in slave- & child-labor manufactories overseas) that anything they say is suspect and without credibility. Scott Lee (or Lee Scott, I never have figured out his name) is a disgrace, a shame, & a maggot as far as representing America, American business, or human beings. Sam Walton was a decent man; he must be whirling in his grave at Scott/Lee's vile shenanigans.
4 - Kathy
I don't think of fair business practices are being partisan, Red.
Scott, I wound up listening to the floor debate so that I could update my piece as soon as the Assembly voted. I'm going to do a separate piece on the lawsuits.
And Nancy, you make valid points. Some of them were made on the floor in Maryland yesterday as well.
5 - Temple Stark
Man, you sure can tell some of the people commenting haven't read the post - which would have answered the questions presented.
-temple
6 - pogblog
I certainly think we need single-payer national healthcare, but in the meantime, I can't see how the walmarts et ilk are allowed to even call any money profit or deem themselves successful if they don't provide healthcare for their employees. I bet they provide healthcare for themselves.
You treat your workers like interchangeable parts, cogs, and you get to beat your chest in the name of almighty Amurican success? For shame. Healthcare should be factored in before you call it profit.
If it takes a legislature to put their pudgy corpoRATe toes to the fire, vote on.
I'm grateful for the update, KG. I lived on the Eastern Shore before there were any bridges. (I lived in St. Michaels. The idea of Dick & Donald wandering around your childhood streets and rivers is so dizzzguzzting you cannot possibly imagine -- but that's another story.)
7 - Dave Nalle
I certainly think we need single-payer national healthcare,
So you'd rather trade good care for almost all for mediocre care for everyone, sacrificing the financial wellbring of every one of us to bring healthcare to a tiny minority of the population who genuinely need but cannot afford it. Why not just find a way to help those who need it without excessively punishing those who can and will provide for their own insurance?
but in the meantime, I can't see how the walmarts et ilk are allowed to even call any money profit or deem themselves successful if they don't provide healthcare for their employees. I bet they provide healthcare for themselves.
Who do you think 'themselves' are? This is supposed to be a free country. If healthcare is a top priority these workers can choose not to work at Walmart, or they can pay the very reasonable price for the supplemental health insurance plan which WalMart does offer. This is a free country. People are expected to take care of themselves. The assumption that it's automatically part of a company's responsibilities to pay for the employee's every need is inherently unamerican.
Dave
8 - Kathy
Hi, Pogblog:
I lived in VA and PA during the 80s and spent a bit of time on the Eastern Shore with dairy farmers.
How to provide health care for everyone is a serious issue that should be elevated in political debate - and free from sound bites and pot-shots. Although the media and politicos don't like to talk about it, Medicaid has the potential to bankrupt the US long before Social Security could begin to (assuming all the dire warnings are correct).
Let's face it - the US spends more per capita on health care than any country in the world ... but, IIRC, we don't rank #1 in any measure of "healthiness" according to WHO. At least 15% of all Americans don't have health insurance -- in 2002, 9 in 10 children had no health insurance! http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/healthmedical/a/healthins.htm
Health care costs continue to rise much faster than the rate of inflation. In 2003, we spent 15.3 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on health care. Projection for 2013: 18.7 percent.
Our system -- based on my personal experiences with eldercare and those of my my friends in the health care field -- is heavily weighted towards technological intervention and life-preservation-at-all-costs. Medicare payments are equally biased towards tests -- Medicare paid more for my mom to have three x-rays in her physician's office (taking the films + reading the films) than it paid a surgeon to amputate my father's leg! Which required the greater skill and involved greater patient risk?
I don't know if a single-payer system can solve the underlying problem. I am sure that we haven't defined the problem -- only the symptom (escalating cost).
9 - David M. Brown
"How to provide health care for everyone" is not a legitimate topic of political debate. "How to leave everybody alone so they can earn and keep the money they need to pay their bills" would be a legitimate topic. Communism is both impractical and immoral. Nobody has a right to enslave me--even in the name of "helping" me.
Four decades of ever-increasing government intervention in medicine has yielded plenty of negative consequences; it's time to look at causes, not keep demanding more of the same until the market for medical care is utterly squelched.
I posted an extended comment on the Wal-Mart over at the LFB Blog, in which I explain why Wal-Mart should immediately shut down all operations in Maryland. ("Time to do the John Galt thing, Wal-Mart," dated 1/13/06.)
10 - Kathy
Hi, David:
I'm curious. How many times have you read _Atlas Shrugged_? And how old, in round numbers, are you?
I've just turned 50. I've read Atlas Shrugged at least a half-dozen times, maybe more. Plus The Night of January 16th, We the Living (twice), Anthem (twice), The Fountainhead (twice + saw the movie once).
Your comparison of Wal-Mart with John Galt is flawed on SO many fronts I don't know where to begin. But the easiest is this: Wal-Mart was started by Sam Walton, who is DEAD. It ain't - and has not been for a LONG time - an organization powered by the ideas, sweat, etc of ONE PERSON. Ayn Rand did not envision the multinational corporate critter that is Wal-Mart (although, I've been told, Marx did).
Kathy
11 - Maurice
I lived in England for a number of years and got to test out their National Health Care first hand. I was shocked and more than a little alarmed by their level of 'care'. I had a minor bicycle accident that required some stitches. I was taken into a large room full of beds. There were probably 50 patients being 'served'. I spent 3 hours surrounded by these sick people (tubercular coughs!) before I got my stitches. I was very relieved to get out of there and asked some of the people I lived with about it. They said only the poor people use National Health and that next time I should go to a real doctor.
Is that what you are proposing we do to our poor?
12 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
I live in Israel and use the "kupat holim" system we have here. It costs us NIS 396 every 2 months for basic coverage and NIS 380 every two months for additional coverage, including disaster coverage. Terorist attacks are included, of course. That works out to about $84 a month.
I pay nothng to see a regular doctor and between NIS 18 and NIS 23 for specialist care $4 - $5 a visit.
I suffered a heart attack here and received EXCELLENT medical care. I'm very satisfied with the medical treatment I receive in this country. But if I had to get a transplanted organ, the small population would make it problematic.