Market Currents
Wal-Mart (WMT) reportedly plans to deny health insurance to new employees who work fewer than 30...
-
Saturday, December 1, 2012, 2:50 PM ETWal-Mart (WMT) reportedly plans to deny health insurance to new employees who work fewer than 30 hours/week. The policy change will use an Obamacare loophole to shift the costs of health insurance to the government.
Other date
Latest Consumer Articles
This news story has 111 comments:
Walmart's decision is theirs to make with part-time employees. Full-time are typically employed 40 or more hours per week, so those with 30 or less fall into the part-time category. If they are able to receive health insurance via Obamacare, then so be it.
How many more companies will use this loophole to ensure their part-time employees get health coverage?
only a small % of companies pay benefits to part-timers. These people often go w/o coverage and end up going to emergency rooms, which these costs hospitals pass along to the rest of us. The Affordable Healthcare Act makes everybody get healthcare coverage...this will SAVE money.
No question there is much waste in Medicare and Medicaid, but I was outraged after my father had a stroke, that the wealthy spend the money to "hide" assets so their parent gets medicaid payments. The nursing homes actually proactively distribute attorney names who specialize.
w/r to U.S. it is the highest cost per person in the world; we rate 37th in overall quality, 41st infant mortality...this is outrageous and needed attention.
all this socialist/communist talk is by the same people against Roosevelt w/ Social Security and Johnson w/ Medicare...our grandchildren will be outraged when people try to make alterations to their Affordable Healthcare Act down the road
What about our massive obesity and heart disease rates? It doesn't matter how much you spend on healthcare when you have an inherently more unhealthy population....
Food for thought
read http://bit.ly/RCNK2H
Leave it to wealthy to scam more money from the middle-class.
How many people do you employ ?
ONE day you will regret your comment. It is called KARMA !!! Pretty sad that you think someone unemployed actually wants to be in that position. Not even sure why i am even responding to your way of thinking...But i am sure KARMA will hit you, and you will remember what you just wrote!!
Pay no attention to those who haven't walked in the unemployed shoes...Their day will come, and they will remember what they posted. It is a shame that people actually think this way of their fellow workers who got laid off, lost their benefits, and scramble to make ends meet...
Garbage posting not even worth my time, but i had to get it out as i have family who , under this recession, are struggling to keep a roof over their heads..Some people just disgust me..
Of course you always have people who are lazy, but just look at our economy. We have close to 400k WEEKLY being laid off and no where near the amount of jobs needed for those WHO need to work to pay the bills.
Add to that once you are in your fiftys the opportunities diminish. My family member worked 25 years for one company, and then was laid off. He has sent out over 1k resumes with no luck.
That is why this country is passed the tipping point, our fiat dollar will die, and holder of PM'S will garner the wealth transfer. Kicking the can down the road won't work forever..
It's just the sheeple don't recognise how bad of a position our country is in, debt wise, education wise, etc...Time will tell !!!
I know what it is like to fail in life - fortunately I did most of it while I was young.
I fully support having unemployment insurance for the man that runs a piece of equipment for 17 years and then is told the plant is closing and he has to try to find a new job. He will need time to find a similar job or to be trained to do something similar and I have no issue paying taxes to help he and his family through a difficult time.
But I respectfully disagree that being unemployed when your 23 or 27 and single and are abled-bodied is a hardship. And I know what thats like!!! I would extend that to many situations in life.
One of the biggest issues we face is the changing expectation of adults to provide for themselves. In 1980, we still saved over 10% of our incomes - why? Because people expected that they were the primary person responsible for themselves and their families. Today - its not the same - people think they should spend all their money and have Ipods, Pads, Phones, 50K trucks, etc, etc. I have many employees that by all appearances must be earning much more than I do!!! And that is fine - its their choice. But if/when something goes wrong then I would respectfully say they should be prepared to face the choices they have made. I don't say that to be evil or hateful or rude. I'll contribute to the local charities that they might have to turn to. But I object that somehow I should regularly (through taxes) dig deep into my pocket to pay for folks that CHOOSE to live a certain way - when I choose to live what I believe is a responsible lifestyle.
And I don't think my views are ignorant. And I'd even put forward that in some ways we teach ignorance by not allowing children to see the results of bad choices. When I was young you saw some suffering (in relative terms) - and you were told it was a result of drinking, sloth, laziness, drugs, etc - and you realized even at a young age it isn't a good life. Today my daughter sees unemployed people living the same lifestyle - enjoying life just as much - and seemingly not having a lot of worries (and I'm not implying that is the situation for all - but I see many younger people not generally interested nor worried about work). Not a good development IMO.
And just to point out in practical terms what I'm saying. I've never paid 50K for a vehicle (I could). I lived for a few years when young without any tv (because I couldn't afford it), I still do not have a mobile phone and no smartphone, Just two years ago I broke down and bought a cable "package" (with internet included). And while I'm not one of these super rich people - I've done well and live a comfortable lifestyle. I don't think its ignorant to suggest others - living with less assets and income - might consider living a different lifestyle rather than expect taxpayers to fund said lifestyle.
Lots of 23 and 27 year olds collect unemployment benefits, I see them every day. And unemployment benefits are there to help during a difficult period - they aren't supposed to provide the same living. And people should also rely on their own savings, their families, their neighbors, their communities if the situation calls for it.
You can believe whatever you'd like about myself. It doesn't change the lack of personal responsibility that exists more and more in our society.
Unfortunately, folks like yourself seem to be the majority and will continue to believe in the simple slogans used to justify more and more government dependency - where no one is blame for their lot in life - and only the government can make things right. And anyone like myself that speaks up is simply personally attacked.
No need for either of us to reply to each other in the future.
Regards
BINGO!!! Nice call......Has many employees but no cell phone? no cable ? Tell me how you run a business today without a cell phone? Yell loud??
I own a business and need two phones!!
What a farce...I was laughing reading it !Had no clue of the 30 hr minnimum for benefits but treated his employees ok....what a joke..
You got busted, just take it like a man..and no, the young generation of that age isn't abusing anything. I have a daughter around that age and she has a Teaching Degree. Since theyre no full time jobs now in teaching she is going for her Masters AND is the lead substitute teacher in her high school.
So don't go knocking the young generation. It is the older generation that allowed all this crap to happen from Nixon to the POTUS right now.
Take some blame..
And I don't believe I made any statement about minimums for benefits.. .. Nor did I blame young people for our country's problems. And if you read some of the comments I generally make here at SA, I actively support having those who are responsible for the mess take the medicine for the mess.
But thats ok. When faced with any type of common sense I guess its easier to insult, distort, and denegrate as opposed to explaining how you might be correct.
Stop, stop......No cell phone but run a business now with managers??
Did i say yell at anyone? You didn't even get it...
Do you think the readers don't see through this mess you write?
Next i am gonna read your the head of Citibank.I am done responding, why waste time....Let the readers decide!!!
And amazingly enough businesses existed before the advent of cell phones and the internet.
But I do appreciate that you will not respond to my posts in the future as insults generally don't contribute to the forum.
Neither do lies !!!
The problems really started with Adam and Eve. They would not listen.
Now if you are a evolutionist the problems started in the muck.
NEVER, in my entire time in business did I think about whether someone should be full time or part time based on anything other than what the business needed, or in a few instances what the person desired.
This shows how many pigs are at the public trough. Its disgusting. Walmart (and other large entities) already get free roads, free traffic lights, free real estate, zero real estate taxes, free re-zoning, free everything from local and state governments - and I"m supposed to now compete with the addition of free health care paid by the government for their employees?
Folks - take it from someone that has seen it firsthand. I've spent decent amount of time in parts of the world where freedom didn't exist for decades. FREEDOM and LIBERTY dwarfs anything the government will promise you. The USSR had large enterprises - all staffed and run by......those in favor with the government - ie Communist party members. We aren't too far way from the same situation here in the USA - public employees plus the politicians plus the financial elite plus those totally dependent gives you close to a ruling majority.
So now the government will subsidize health care for supposedly the biggest and baddest corporate entities..... all paid for by folks like myself. Brilliant.
Quit complaining and or learn what is going on and help make it perfect.
The issue was one of affordability for those without insurance. Because of the system of reimbursement prices stopped bearing any relation with reality. Doctors spend more on people to process paperwork than they do to actually provide care. That leaves the person that shows up and wants to just receive care and pay facing monstrous bills.
Reform of the system was very possible. Why not try letting insurance companies offer regional health insurance plans? Why not put regulations in place to limit emergency care bills - and to also allow hospitals to send folks to urgent care facilities instead of the emergency room. Why not try some sort of national catastrophic insurance to protect against cancer, heart disease, etc?
Why decide to scrap the whole thing and try to take it all over. Where is the federal exchange for health care plans? Will they meet their own deadline to have it up and running? No
And as for your comment about quit complaining - thats exactly what big brother wants - just shut up and live according to the way "we" tell you.
It is too bad the thumbs down button is gone.
In the longer run, I expect all employers to drop health care entirely, since the cost of the fine for not providing it is about 1/3 of the cost of providing. I believe that is the intention of this horrible legislation: to deliberately shift all coverage to the federal government, ending up with a single payer system arrived at through the back door.
But there is no way that this should be allowed to be a government provided competitive advantage to large entities.
It is called bad PR for Walmart.
No-one chose Costco over Walmart based on their employee health care policies before Obama-care, and won't now.
They have found a way to provide healthcare for part-time employees.
Again I ask: How many other companies will follow Walmart's move?
Not sure how Costco entered the discussion. Are they using the loophole to provide healthcare for their employees also?
This isn't about Apple or Costco, it is about Obamacare. Let's bring the focus of the discussion back to Obamacare and this loophole.
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
This Obamatax is going to blow up one day!!
This makes perfect sense to one person, apparently.
Forbes
Classic "let them eat cake" comment. COST has "better prices" on bulk, high margin items that most WMT customers simply can't afford to purchase in bulk. Same reason the dollar stores thrive in recessions - people buy smaller amounts and live hand to mouth. COST pays better wages because their customers are better off. The two are simply not comparable.
I've owned insurance agency in Ky for 30 years and 30 hours has always been #of hours for part time cut off for health benefits for ALL companies..not just Walmart.How easily the sheep are led!
I also owned a company and we had the same state law for health benefits!!
It's a loophole that makes sense. Why would you want to cover part-time workers that likely have other forms of coverage (teens, seniors on medicare etc). Also, you'd raise the cost of keeping those part-time workers employed thereby leading to HIGHER unemployment. If you want to know what GENEROUS benefits can do to an economy, go look at Greece or Spain. The unions there have ensured that only tenured people still have jobs while YOUTH unemployment is 25-50%.
American jobs have vanished off Main Street, American jobs have gone to China and Bangladesh, living wages have gone down to the point that taxpayers have to pay the food portion of a Wal-Mart worker by way of food stamps but for some reason this sits well with Republicans while the heirs to Sam Walton sit on $250 billion and profits are at record highs.
If you were to have access to the prices that Wal-Mart paid, and you had a mom and pop store, you too could offer low prices as China is prepared to sell at a loss to drive sales and recoup through smaller retailers.
Wal-Mart is as anti-American as can be and they are decimating Main Street,
There is no excuse for a company that has so much profit annually to keep taking from the workers and expecting everybody else to foot the bill through their taxes.
Greed seems to have no limits and they even have the audacity to demand tax cuts so their portion of food stamps contribution is far less.
America. With companies like Wal-Mart dictating which family run businesses will fold under their pressure, America is screwed.
The irony is that conservatives pay lip service to the small business owner, pine for the halcyon days of the 50s and community but cheer on the destruction of the communities they live in by unfitted merchants of greed. What ever happened to love of country and looking out for the underdog, caring and compassion for your fellow American on the right hand side of politics?
There is even gloating at the prospect of poor people being exploited and ripped of emanating from the right.
What I do have a problem with is the giveaways. Kmart was the first to move into our community.... They leased CRE same as everyone else. They lasted about 12 years.
Walmart then moved in - they got rezoning - FREE and EXPEDIATED. They got new roads - FREE and EXPEDIATED. They got free traffic lights - FREE and EXPEDIATED AND Without any traffic flow studies which are supposedly required!!! Then they got 10 years of ZERO real estate taxes. Then they got reduced real estate taxes for the 15 years after that. Then they decided they needed/wanted a second exit onto a local street. Supposedly against the zoning laws - Hey lets just waive that one also!
That I have a real problem with. If I were to set out to do the same it would take me years and a heck of a lot of money. That is not free enterprise/capitalism. And it happens in town after town. Let them buy their own land - pay their taxes - pay for all the required studies and permits - pay for the new roads - pay for the traffic lights - pay for all the same things every other business pays for. I greatly resent that its my tax dollars the town and county spend to allow a competitor to move in and try to take business from me. And why does it happen??? Because they bribe the politicians - plain and simple (and I don't give a damn if its considered legal - its still a bribe).
Post of the day.
Taxpayers are making up the difference in costs of living. and it is entirely their ideal to do so all year long. Plus the part-timers they are hiring presently for the holiday seasons {some of which will replace current full-time workers} are also still on the Government til.
We all expected them to be shut down, however magically they passed and were allowed to operate...That was a real head scratcher here.
I swear i would never buy any meats, or food from ANY store of theirs. Soap, Clothes, Medicines, are fine.....FOOD...NO WAY!
Problem is i think they are already taking that paper and buying PM'S with it. So who gets the last laugh??
Something is really amiss.
Something is really amiss.
You also will regret what you might think is humor...Millions of Americans on unemployment would rather be working. I hope you one day have that funny feeling in your stomach when your told you are no longer needed!!
You want fair? Start shipping wealth and materials to Africa and Asia.
Otherwise you are just a hypocrite.
The 'poor' have been continually revised up the economic ladder to the point to where, now, they are almost middle class by a 1958 standard. Actually, today's 'poor' would be considered wealthy by a 1958 standard, what with their futuristic TV phones and huge wall flatscreens and free food that magically appears in their cupboards with the square piece of plastic in their wallet, the cheap housing, free infant formula and diapers, endless UI checks, disability claims, SSI etc. etc. None of which existed back in 1958, let alone 1935.
So, today's left, along with the Washington/media complex which has been redefining what it means 'to be poor' have reclassified it so many times that it is actually quite a well-heeled group.
Why do they do this? Because history is always the same as the upper 2% along with the power elites join forces to knock the upper middle down with the middle and move 'the poor' up into the middle so there are only two classes, the bourgeois and the proletariat. Sound familiar?
So 'the poor' are used as agitprop to expand the middle class by incorporating them into it by using the upper middle and middle to finance the operation. So they bring those two groups down and the lower one up and they all share misery together as all incomes fall together.
Then, we are left with our little nirvana of the state of the super elite and ... the rest.
Meanwhile, until we get there, all 'the poor' are revised to 'be poor' and 'look poor' while living like kings as the goal posts are moved and the agitprop ever advances to get more people to pay in to the system. Its an old tactic, but works every time.
Hatred, class warfare, balkanization, demographics set upon demographics, anything used to divide and conquer and its working right on cue.
American health care has undergone a many changes recently and some of these have added to costs. Example: hospitals and health care providers are now huge for-profit corporations doing their best to grow the bottom line, many wonderful new technical advances and medications have been made but they are costly. Then there's the huge cost of litigation which has skyrocketed in a few decades.
Everyone needs health care coverage and we may be gradually moving toward socialized medicine. Our system currently has many middle men and therefore higher cost than it otherwise might. . This, depending on one's insurance and status may result in better care, but it is a cumbersome system loaded with bureaucracy and inequity.
Politics and time will dictate the future, but based on the last election, a unified, broad- based system may be only a few decades away, for better or worse.
The free market has not worked in healthcare because the incentive structure in the pay for performance world is to "do more", not to strive for better outcomes. Until that changes we will still be throwing away a ton of money rather than focusing on treating the lifestyle conditions that created the "poor US substrate."
1) Address medicolegal issues that generate so many unnecessary workups. If done correctly, that would reduce costs of medical care by my estimate at least 10 percent. And some states solutions, while limiting medicolegal issues have actually covered up real medicolegal cases.
2) Negotiate drug prices on the national and state level, the same way the rest of the world does it. This would reduce treatment costs by at least another 10 to 20 percent.
There you have it, 20 to 30 percent savings. By the way, obamacare does nothing to address these at all, which is the reason most doctors despise it. Instead it takes primary aim at cutting reimbursement at specialists - which will likely save less than 2 percent of healthcare costs - and likely make the whole system a lot less efficient.
But all of this requires smart decisions that go against biggest money grubbers in DC, so don't count on it to happen.
I hope they control costs.
I like the prices at Walmart.
The down side is that all these part timers will undoubtedly become or already are O-dude voters lining up for more free stuff courtesy of the tax paying producers.
*Chest fist bump 2X + peace sign*
Out.
This (Un) Affordable Care Act is about to become the most destructive economic force this country has ever seen.
They don't like our diets, no sugar, salt or soda for you anymore. Problem solved!
Not to mention, people are so stupid in that they get mad at companies for doing things they legally can do. Walmart is not breaking a law, and this new legislation allows for this to happen. What's the problem?
I don't know where to start with that mentality.