They have over 17,000 employees in Maryland. They would have to lay off 7,000 employees, or over one third of their workforce. I doubt if stockholders would be very happy with the effect on share prices if seven out of the 20 stores near Baltimore were to close.
Not really. If making sure someone does not “die in the street” is a social goal then it is properly paid for by taxpayers (society). On the flip side, if it is not a social goal, then it probably is a personal one, and it is not the responsibiliy of a any other private entity any more so than my desire for a car or a plasma TV anyone welse’s responsibility. Of course a private company is more than free to offer me health insurance (or a car or a TV) as inducement to get me to work for them. But required? No.
Yeah, like that Simpsons episode where Mr. Burns agrees to provide health benefits for his full-time employees, then turns around and makes Homer a freelance contractor? 
You can support this claim of fact, I assume? Because it sounds pretty extraodinary.
I seriously doubt this is true either. In these days of outsourcing even the smallest of tasks that aren’t (and many that are) critical business processes, it doesn’t seem likely to me that large corporations would be doing everything it takes to implement and maintain healthcare insurance in house. Claims and policy authoring alone would be prohibitively expensive. Let alone underwriting and legal counsel.
In some companies, via cafeteria plans there is some limited pay vs. benefits exchange. The reason this is not more widespread is that if you offered the option to opt completely out, largely only the heavy users would continue to opt for the insurance, which would drive up insurance costs significantly, to the point where benefit cuts would be much more widespread than they are today.
The companies response to any mechanism that required more benefits to part-time workers would be to replace more of the part time help with full time workers.
Businesses are not social programs. There will always be a market and financial-based response to any changing of the rules. That is why legislation like this will be ineffective. It will unlikely get anything like the intended result, because in general, legislators underestimate the market response. So the argument about whether the corporations or the taxpayer will pay for higher health care costs in the long run will be irrelevant. It is going to be the taxpayer.
I’m the CFO of a 400 employee company. We are self insured. We outsource the claim payment, it’s pretty cheap. Bet WalMart has this figured out.
Perhaps I wasn’t clear.
If multiple companies do that (hire a ton of people, fail to pay 8% of the payroll on insurance), then the law doesn’t single out Walmart.
So far, however, it appears that Walmart is the only company. If you’ve got another one - great! That way, the law isn’t singling out Walmart anymore. Who is it? Where are they?
Perhaps the state should just raise its elgibility requirements for Medicaid?
Taxpayers that feel overburdened should write their representatives and request that elgibility for Medicaid be tightened.
Maybe the medical community should take up the slack?
Don’t doctors make a fair amount of money? Isn’t there something in the Hippocratic oath requiring doctors to care for those in need even though payment can’t be made?
I remember in the Gunsmoke TV series, Doc Adams often treated patients without getting paid, or if he was paid, he got a pig or a couple of chickens or some home cooking.
Where is it written that Doctors have to make allot of money?
And I am tired of the assumption that people who use their health care benefits are using them unwisely. First give me a definition of “unwise use of medical benefits” that I can agree with and then show me how much of that is going on. I don’t accept that merely taking advantage of health care coverage is proof that there is wastage.
You’re right. I totally forgot about this. This is adverse selection taking place in the health insurance industry. Still, I’d rather have the option of choosing my own plan, hopefully cheaper, because I take care of myself. I wonder what the landscape would look like if we take health insurance out of the employer’s hands, and made the general public one large pool, and made insurance companies compete for the healthy people.
IOW, let me revision my vision: (Granted, I know nothing about the industry). There would be UHC, but it would super minimal and super crappy, but it will cover the basics. I rarely see a doctor, so I would rarely use it, and I would take the cash instead of the benefit. However, I would legislate the industry such that health insurance companies compete for the more healthy. To me, this makes sense: healthy people are less likely to see the doctor, to get sick, and to file claims. I would gripe about paying it and never using it, much like my car insurance. The more at risk people will have their cost displaced throughout the populace.
However, I can’t avoid seeing how to avoid issues like the people in Canada (and the UK?) where the state will simply not pay for treatment because the citizen falls outside some set of parameters, and only the wealth (or super-wealthy) can afford such treatments. I guess this last part will be a bitter pill for society to have to swallow. Perhaps, this will be the incentive to not be complacent.
This will cost jobs. However, it’s going to cost jobs because all of the folks who were getting screwed by a 35 hour/week schedule, will just get the extra 5 hours. It won’t be very many jobs.
It’s absolutely the right thing to do. Until we have universal health care in this country, the largest companies will have to shoulder the burden. I can almost guarantee you, that after this there will be a rising voice in the corporate community demanding universal health care coverage.
I’m just baffled by people who don’t mind subsidizing a family of billionaires by paying for the healthcare of their employees. If this were Microsoft, you’d be screaming from the rooftops.
Why is “a ton of people” important to this issue? If you have 20 companies that employ 5,000 people each, isn’t it more important to get them on the right track than the one company who employs 17,000? How about the 1,000 companies that employ 500 people? The 10,000 mark seems awfully arbitrary to me, it is far too large a number to distinguish anything other than the enormous companies from the merely huge.
While I can appreciate that WalMart’s actions prompted this law, what is the rationale for exempting the guy who hires 9,000 people? I’ll tell you, it’s a hell of a lot easier to pass a law that only sticks it to a few companies, than to pass a law that hits many companies. If the law was fair and just, you would fight to get it passed so that ALL employees get fair treatment, not just the ones working for WalMart. It was expedient to pass it with such a large clip level because so few companies would be on the hook and lobbying against it, and their competitors would be in favor of it, to take the big guys down a notch.
I guess if I was a 35hr a week no healthcare schlub working for Costco, it’s just tough shit on me, they’re not important enough for the law to care about how they treat me. I should have worked at a “big” company instead.
Costco offers health benefits for their part time employees - so, you wouldn’t have had a problem.
As I said before, I would prefer universal healthcare. But right now, why not go after the companies who are causing the biggest drain on the state first?
Nope.
The reason Microsoft has better benefits than Walmart has very little to do with them being a good corporate citizen. They have better benefits because it’s required to attract the employee skill set required for their business. Not the case for WalMart.
Very much doubt this would have the corporate world clamoring for universal health coverage. WalMart would certainly rather comply with the new legislation (via some combination of increased benefits, decreased pay, workforce reduction, combined with making up for any profit shortfall by further squeezing of vendors leading to further movement of jobs overseas), they’ll be better off than if their profits were taxed at the rate required to pay for UHC.
Companies who offer above average benefits would also be against UHC, since that would take away an avenue to help competitively attract employees.
Well, it’s a good thing I didn’t say that then! I said there was no incentive to use it wisely. What do you think the incentive is, if it costs nothing?
I’ve always felt that UHC would most benefit small businesses and their employees.
I am not sure how it would hurt a large Corporation however.
Perhaps someone could do a better job of explaining how UHC would be bad for Big Business.
Jim
Is that even legal? To try and ask about detailed health related problems, that in some cases might be rather personal, when hiring?
And no offense, Rearviewmirror, but surely you’re not using an episode of Gunsmoke as a cite that doctors have to treat everyone? While I do believe you’re right, I think I’d need a better source.
Also, please keep in mind peeps that not everyone with poor health did that to themselves. (Smokers, overweight people, etc).
Sigh… Ok, CompanyX who employs under 10,000 people, does the same thing as WalMart with respect to healthcare, and gets a 100% free pass by this law. Defend the free pass, and help me to understand why CompanyX workers should get nothing because their huge company isn’t quite huge enough to satisfy MDs lawmakers. Far more people are employed by companies with less than 10,000 MD workers than companies with more, and all of them are deliberately ignored by this law.
Why do you think the wise use of health care need to be incentivized?
People don’t generally like going to the doctor all that much, especially if they’re not sick. I wouldn’t go have my appendix removed or order a set of X-rays just because I could do it for free. You can go take a free personality test at your local Scientology center anytime you like, so since you have no financial incentive not to, shall I assume you take one every day just for kicks? 
I might, however, go to the doctor more often when I suspect I might be sick. Right now, it’s slightly cheaper for me to pick up some OTC medication and feel a little better than to shell out the $20 copay and see someone who knows what they’re doing; it’s much cheaper for my friends who don’t have health care through their employers. I don’t think it’d be a bad thing if people were less hesitant to see a doctor when they might be sick - the sooner they find out their sore throat is caused by an infection, the less likely they are to infect me.
As for the OP… when you pass a law forcing companies to pay health care, it seems to me you’re admitting the market has failed. Just bite the bullet and set up a real health care system for everyone in the state, instead of expecting companies to do it for you and punishing them when they don’t.