ObamaCare Strikes Again ... Wal-Mart Joins Home Depot, Target and Other Retailers in Excluding Part-Timers from Health Insurance Coverage ...Taxpayers Beware

The biggest private sector employer in the U.S. is Wal-Mart and as is the case with many other big retailers, it is taking steps to better control the company's ever increasing health care costs by increasing employee premiums, raising deductibles, reducing eligibility for coverage and in effect turning over to taxpayers the responsibility to pay for any health insurance funding shortfalls. It's another example of ObamaCare at work.


By excluding its estimated 30,000 part-time employees from eligibility for its company provided health insurance coverage, Wal-Mart will avoid and not be forced to pay ObamaCare mandated penalties of $2,000 each year for each part-timer who works less than thirty hours per week.


"Wal-Mart to End Health Insurance for Some Part-Time Employees has the summary:


"Wal-MartT in Your Value Your Change Short position                         is cutting health insurance for another 30,000 part-time workers and raising premiums for its other employees, as U.S. corporations push to contain costs in the wake of the federal health-care law.

Autumn is typically when U.S. companies unveil changes to employee insurance plans. This is the first such enrollment period since employers could assess the full financial impact of the federal health-care overhaul, and it is a key moment as companies work to lower their spending ahead of looming taxes on the most generous plans.

Many businesses are continuing to shift more costs to workers. Phoenix-based technology distributor Avnet, for example, is paring back its traditional plans in favor of high-deductible options. Other companies are reducing coverage for spouses . . . .

For Wal-Mart, that push from the individual mandate contributed to an influx of workers who signed up for coverage, jacking up costs. Wal-Mart, the country’s largest private employer, with about 1.4 million employees, forecasts that its health-care costs will rise by $500 million more than it had expected in the year ending Jan. 31, 2015. “We can’t take our eyes off costs,” said Sally Welborn, senior vice president of global benefits at Wal-Mart...

Under the Affordable Care Act, large companies beginning in 2015 must offer coverage to most employees working 30 hours a week or more or pay a penalty starting at around $2,000 per worker. Most individuals, meanwhile, must show that they have health insurance or pay an individual penalty."

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In other words, Wal-Mart and other firms are making the common sense decision to avoid government penalties and simply allow the government's restrictions, mandates, rules and regulations dictate how their company's part-timers will be insured. And in the end, taxpayers will get the final bill for any shortfalls in premiums paid by employees and collected by approved insurers. Wal-Mart's reaction to the law is yet another example of the Affordable Care Act in action. Taxpayers beware.


The new game in retailing, restaurants and hotels, motels and other low paying entities will be to keep part-time workers on the clock for less than thirty hours each week, drop any health care benefits currently being provided to them, and sit back and watch the effects of ObamaCare unfold.


Everyday Low Benefits is subtitled 'Wal-Mart dumps 30,000 part-timers onto the ObamaCare exchanges:'


"Wal-Mart endorsed ObamaCare in 2009 and helped drag the bill through Congress, and so far it hasn’t recanted. By holding back economic growth and incomes, perhaps the law is expanding the retailer’s customer base. . . .

Wal-Mart cites its inability to manage higher-than-anticipated health expenses. Perhaps—though wasn’t ObamaCare supposed to bring those costs down? Obviously the company is also responding rationally to ObamaCare’s incentives. With a subsidized government alternative now open for business, and since corporations aren’t liable for a penalty for not covering people who work fewer than 30 hours a week on average, cost-control logic says to send such coverage ballast over the side. Other retail and grocery chains including Target, Home Depot and Trader Joe’s have already done the same.


ObamaCare’s critics predicted that such insurance dumping was inevitable, and the only question now is how many and how fast other companies partake of the new all-you-can-eat entitlement buffet. Get whatever you like, the bill’s on taxpayers. The disruptions will be concentrated in industries with large numbers of low-skilled and low-income workers, like restaurants, hospitality and, yes, retail.

The irony is that even as Wal-Mart drops insurance because it is too costly, President Obama is claiming credit for lowering health costs. He boasted the other day that the law gave every U.S. family “a $1,800 tax cut” by supposedly reducing the rate of employer-sponsored premium growth. ObamaCare had nothing to do with that, and it surely won’t be any consolation to Wal-Mart’s latest health plan diaspora."    

Summing Up  

ObamaCare is another example of government knows best elitism at work.

And with respect to the President's promise that the new law would reduce our health care costs, it won't happen.   

Government has become far too big and far too expensive. Unlike what shoppers enjoy at Wal-Mart, a good value it's not.

Nor is our government being managed for the benefit of its owners and payers, We the People. 

In fact, politics as practiced in America today is intended to benefit the politicians and their allies, pure and simple.

It's a shame, but it's the truth.

That's my take.

Thanks. Bob.