Health Study Shows Taxpayers Fund Companies' Health Care

Critics Say Employers Cannot Afford Insurance From Wal-Mart

POSTED: 6:58 am CST March 5, 2005
UPDATED: 7:33 am CST March 5, 2005

DES MOINES, Iowa -- Taxpayers are funding health care for hundreds of Wal-Mart workers in Iowa.

http://www.theomahachannel.com/health/4256634/detail.html

"Wal-Mart employs 845 workers in Iowa who received benefits from the state's Medicaid program last year, according to a report by the Iowa Department of Human Services obtained by The Associated Press.

Tyson Fresh Meats, Casey's General Stores and Hy-Vee also have hundreds of employees receiving state-funded health care.

Critics say the report shows that taxpayers are subsidizing profitable companies that offer inadequate wages and benefits.

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Critics say Wal-Mart's health insurance is too expensive for most workers.
They say stingy companies such as Wal-Mart are partly responsible for the fast growth of Medicaid, which gives health insurance to the poor and disabled."

The Walton and Tyson families go way back. They went to school together in Ohio, then went south to make their fortune in Bentonville, Arkansas.

The probably cringe just writing the "cheap" checks to the employees that they have. They would rather have slavery, I would guess.

and it becomes more apparent:

"According to Uvalde Lindsey, the Northwest Arkansas Council's staff director, such success is due at least in part to the fact that Northwest Arkansas is home to the headquarters of three major U.S. corporations - Wal-Mart in Bentonville, Tyson Foods in Springdale, and JB Hunt Transport in Lowell - and their corporate captains, as well.



"Communities rise and fall according to the quality of their leadership," Lindsey points out. "Anywhere corporate headquarters are located, you find that kind of leadership."



In fact, Walton, Tyson, and Hunt didn't invent the notion of making community centerpieces of their corporate headquarters. In 1915, a group of businessmen in Dodgeville, Wis., published a "Pocket Directory of Business" to promote their little town as "the most progressive town for business in Wisconsin." Eventually, Dodgeville would become globally known as the home of catalog retailer Land's End.



A similar effort in the 1930s involved civic and business leaders in Pella, Iowa, who paid the founders of the Pella Window Company the then outlandish sum of $1,000 to persuade them to transplant their factory from "urbane" Des Moines to their rural Iowa town.

more here:

http://www.fastfacility.com/FastInfo/info7.asp

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"Wal-Mart said it helps remove people from public assistance by providing jobs and health benefits to people who may otherwise be unemployed."
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"The program faces a $170 million budget deficit over the next 18 months."

Seems like another scandal is brewing.

Isn't that just special?

Where the legislator was considering taxing Walmart and other big box retailers because they were costing the state taxpayers for subsidizing health care and other social programs for employees?

Sounds like this issue is gaining in the states.