# Walmart Cutting Health Benefits



## Chuck Smith (Feb 22, 2005)

Walmart is cutting health benefits for part time employees. That is about 2% of its work force of 1.3 million.... that is now 26,000 people who will be without insurance. Do you think other big business will do the same??? hmmmm... another thing I predicted. So what will happen... These people will go on Obamacare, get subsidized and cost the tax payers more money. Or private insurance will go up to pay for the subsidies so everyone else's insurance will go up... or the price of obamacare will rise!!!!

This bill needs to be retracted or totally revamped. Like i have stated... this bill did nothing to curb the cost of what it actually costs to do healthcare. People in the healthcare field are still getting paid and getting increases in wages, the cost of operations are not decreasing, the cost of a stay in a hospital is not going down, the cost to buy surgical tools are not going down, etc. With all of this the cost of insurance will keep rising to pay for these things. But people don't get that!!!!

Also read how much the cost of insurance has gone up!!!

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companie ... ar-BB82MhP



> Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the biggest private sector employer in the United States, said on Tuesday it would no longer provide health benefits to some of its U.S. part-time workers due to ballooning healthcare costs.
> 
> The company it would stop health benefits for part-time employees who work less than 30 hours a week. The move is expected to impact about 2 percent of the company's workforce, Wal-Mart said in a blog post.
> 
> ...


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## huntin1 (Nov 14, 2003)

I would agree, Obamacare needs to go, like right now.

But in the case of part time Walmart employees, the numbers can be misleading. How many of those part time employees actually bought insurance, how many have full time jobs elsewhere with insurance, and how many are 65+ and have medicare. I know that there are a lot of part time employees at the Jamestown Walmart that fall into the last 2 categories.

What sucks is that there are some part time employees who need the insurance, but will no longer have the option.

huntin1


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## Chuck Smith (Feb 22, 2005)

I agree that there are many different situations with Wal Mart... Like you mentioned. But the company is "CUTTING" the benefits. They offer it to them but not anymore. The reason is because of cost!

Walmart was behind obamacare from the get go. Now they are cutting health benefits because of cost. Interesting....


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## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

Walmart knows how tocompete, and the reason they support Obama care is because it will hurt the competition more than them. It's sort of like a slow guy in a race. If he isn't the fastest he trips the other guys.

I think Walmart is the first in a long line to drop health benefits. When everyone thought Obama was giving them something he was actually taking it away. More, I think he knew it.


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## ninjaswede (Sep 3, 2012)

I fear the company I work for is soon to follow. Paying the penalty for not providing insurance is a savings of around 15K per employee compared to actually providing insurance. With many thousands of employees across the US that adds up really fast. I was told if the company feels that Obamacare is here to stay they will drop the benefit.


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## striped1 (Aug 17, 2005)

I would much rather be given additional compensation and buy my health insurance on the open market. For $257 a month I have outstanding insurance that is much cheaper and much better coverage than what my company provides. The monthly total cost for my company's health care package costs over $700 a month.


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## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

striped1 said:


> I would much rather be given additional compensation and buy my health insurance on the open market. For $257 a month I have outstanding insurance that is much cheaper and much better coverage than what my company provides. The monthly total cost for my company's health care package costs over $700 a month.


Then you have not been hit by Obamacare yet. One of my sons had surgery this summer. His premiums have trippled in the last year so he thought his coverage should be good. Wrong. I forget wbat he has to pay before his coverage kicks in, but it's in the thousands.


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## Habitat Hugger (Jan 19, 2005)

Walmart is simply doing what pretty well every other business is doing. Not because of Obamacare, but because of costs.
I've said a million times that simply getting everyone insurance does NOTHING to reduce the overall cost of medicine in USA. All it does is shift the method of payment from one place to another!
The best analogy I can think of is to think the overall cost of medicine is a balloon. Squeeze it one place and it pops out another, but the overall size remains the same. In other words, do we pay for the health costs for the part timers in increased costs at Sprawl Mart, or through taxes to subsidize their " private" insurance? Same thing, different way.
The most important thing though, is that so far whatever you do, including doing nothing, does NOTHING to reduce the overall cost of medicine! That above mentioned balloon is not static, but keeps inflating bigger and bigger! So we are continually squeezing a bigger and bigger balloon, which makes ZERO sense to an old brain like mone! 
Yes, we have a great medical system here, ( says the guy who will be having a HUGE surgery next week - guess all that FICA I paid in for 40 years might trickle back to me a bit! LOL) but we also pay much more here than any other equivalent or even arguably better health system anywhere else in the world. THAT is what should be examined and looked at and " changed", not simply a well meaning but futile thing like finding everyone insurance! This arguably only fuels the fire with more waste, duplication of services, useless advertising, ..........I could go on and on about waste and unnecessary greed and fill up the hard drive on this website about what should be looked at and changed.


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## huntin1 (Nov 14, 2003)

This cut affects about 2% of Walmarts total workforce. And while we are at it let's mention the other large retailers who have made the same cuts: Target, Walgreens, Home Depot, and Trader Joes that I know of so far. I expect many others to follow suit.

(http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2 ... e-workers/)

My employer raised our premium by about 15% this year and have considered dropping health coverage completely.

I'm not a huge Walmart supporter by any means, but the big bad wolf here is not Walmart or any other large employer, it's. Obamacare, period.


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## Habitat Hugger (Jan 19, 2005)

Your post is absolutely correct huntin1, except for blaming Obamacare 100%. The question should be asked what is causing the huge increase in National Medical costs? It's not Obamacare, all Ocare does is shift the cost and methods of payment, doesn't raise or lower the overall cost! 
Until politicians stop using Obamacare as a scapegoat, nothing will be accomplished in the end. They need to start looking at what is causing the costs to rise so,abruptly! Giving a tuberculosis patient a cough syrup does NOTHING to alter the course of the disease! Time to look at the cause of the disease, the tubercle bacillus, and attack IT, rather than cough syrups and band aids. And worthless symptomatic treatment, but politicians get all kinds of votes from well meaning people with silly rhetoric that is nothing more than a red herring.....
Let's ficus on causative factors and prevention etc......finger pointing is useless......


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## striped1 (Aug 17, 2005)

Plainsman said:


> striped1 said:
> 
> 
> > I would much rather be given additional compensation and buy my health insurance on the open market. For $257 a month I have outstanding insurance that is much cheaper and much better coverage than what my company provides. The monthly total cost for my company's health care package costs over $700 a month.
> ...


I bought my plan with no subsidies on the open market in MN through MNSure which is MN's answer to Obamacare. 
My deductible was $750.00 with a $257 monthly premium. After the $750 ded they have paid 100%.

I could have purchased a cheaper plan with a higher ded and less coverage but chose not to. In this case, the open market worked very well for me.

The cost of health insurance is the uninsured and illegal aliens and others who use the ER for all of their "free" healthcare. Hospitals pay for providing this "free" care by charging more to those who are insured thus driving costs up.


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## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

Stiped1 so it's sort of like Obamacare in that it's likely the taxpayer is picking up part of the tab. One bad thing is our legislature protects the insurance companies just like they do the farmers. Our milk cost much more because we can't buy from Minnesota. Likewise there is little to no competition for insurance. Move to North Dakota and expect monthly premiums more like $1000. Maybe someone can post their premiums.


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## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

Stiped1 so it's sort of like Obamacare in that it's likely the taxpayer is picking up part of the tab. One bad thing is our legislature protects the insurance companies just like they do the farmers. Our milk cost much more because we can't buy from Minnesota. Likewise there is little to no competition for insurance. Move to North Dakota and expect monthly premiums more like $1000. Maybe someone can post their premiums.


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## Chuck Smith (Feb 22, 2005)

Stiped1.... Glad you are having luck with MNsure. You must not be in the SE part of the state where the offerings are much less. But you must not have heard that the premiums are going to increase for 2015! But glad it is working for you. For myself... It is still cheaper to keep my BC & BS plan. Just because of where my "income" bracket is. Which makes no sense because HEALTH INSURANCE should not be where your income level is. It should be based on age, health, gender, demographic where you live, etc. NOT INCOME. But I digress.

HH. I have said the same thing about Health Insurance and the CRAP that some of the Democrats were spouting about the Affordable Care Act. Making people get health insurance is doing nothing to lower the cost of health care. Some ways to cut down on health care that have not been addressed is cut down on the frivolous law suits. Example. You live in ND and it is October and you start to get ill. You go in for tests and find out you have an illness (shingles). They treat you and give you meds. You are about 1/2 way through your treatment and you head south for the winter to Florida. Now you go into a doctor down there.... THAT DR. WILL DO THE SAME TESTS AS YOU JUST GOT DONE DOING IN ND. You know why..... fear of lawsuit. So what happens.... Your insurance company gets charged again for the same tests but a month apart with the same results. So the more that happens makes the company increase rates for that demographic. I could go on and on with examples like this but it happens. But it happens more often than you think.

I could go on and on. I will get off my soap box now. :bop:

But the cost of health care not just the band aids or cough syrup is the cause of all of this. It takes about 10 billion dollars to bring a drug to market. that was a figure from about 10 years ago. So imagine what it costs now. So that is why medication costs so much. Maybe the FDA should loosen some restrictions and what not. Again another example why things cost so much.

Dr.'s , Nurse's, IT People, Accounting people, etc... all are getting pay bumps. So are the minimum wage jobs (with Min wage increases) that work for hospitals are getting pay bumps. So where does that money come from to pay these people.... Cost of services.... So in turn INSURANCE INCREASES!!!!

So many factors on why insurance increases every year. But the ACA did nothing to address these issues.


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## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

HH I sent you a pm yesterday.


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