That's larger than the annual GDP of Saudi Arabia. Five of the top 10 richest Americans hail from the Walton family. And yet Wal-Mart is what former President Ronald Reagan might refer to as, well, a welfare queen.
As states across the country struggle to balance budgets and keep their Medicaid programs in check, data from Florida and 12 other states show Wal-Mart to be a top corporate beneficiary of state-run, taxpayer-funded programs like Medicaid.
That is, the retail behemoth deliberately cuts corners on employee health care, forcing a disproportionate number of its employees into state programs in order to receive health care for themselves and their families.
Of Wal-Mart's 1.2 million employees, only about 500,000 of them receive Wal-Mart health care. That's because the employee share of premiums is so high - in some cases, up to $250 per month, about 25 percent of the average monthly salary of a Wal-Mart hourly employee - that many full-time workers simply can't afford it.
In Florida, Wal-Mart has 91,000 employees. Every time an uninsured Wal-Mart worker goes to the ER and can't afford to pay for treatments, all Floridians are picking up the bill. Meanwhile, our Medicaid system is in crisis.
As health-care costs explode and job-based coverage declines across the board, more and more hardworking Americans are being forced into an already cash-strapped system. Medicaid costs in Florida, never cheap, have more than doubled over the past 10 years, from approximately $6 billion in 1995 to more than $14 billion today. To the extent that Medicaid is in crisis, Wal-Mart is a significant part of the problem.
It might be tempting to dismiss this issue as a larger one of corporate welfare, or to argue that we're singling out Wal-Mart unfairly. But facts are facts: Wal-Mart does not just shift health-care costs onto taxpayers, it does so at a level well beyond that of any other employer.
Five employers in Florida account for 29,000 Medicaid-eligible individuals (employees or dependents). Wal-Mart's share represents 42 percent of that group. In Georgia, children of Wal-Mart employees made up over 10,000 of those on Georgia's health-care program for uninsured kids, the PeachCare for Kids program. The next largest employer, Publix, had only 700.
Wal-Mart sees no problem with this. For evidence, you can go straight to the top. In a two-day "open house" with the press at Bentonville, Ark., headquarters earlier this month, Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott was asked why so many Wal-Mart employees are getting their health care from public assistance programs instead of their employer. Scott said, "In some of our states, the public program may actually be a better value - with relatively high income limits to qualify, and low premiums."
Government programs are a safety net for low-income Americans, not a competitor to the largest, most profitable company in the world. But more importantly, Scott is admitting that Wal-Mart takes advantage of public health programs for its own competitive ends: It passes costs onto taxpayers as a business strategy - not as an unfortunate consequence of some heretofore unrealized deficiency in its health-care program.
Finally, his response is entirely disingenuous. Scott acts as though public programs are a better deal for workers, when really they're simply a better deal for Wal-Mart. It's not that Wal-Mart can't afford to do better. It's that Wal-Mart chooses not to.
The Maryland Legislature recently passed a bill that would make large employers like Wal-Mart pay their fair share. It would require all companies with 10,000 or more employees to spend at least 8 percent of their payroll on providing health care for their workers or to pay into a state health care fund.
But in Maryland, Gov. Robert Ehrlich himself is on the Wal-Mart dole. He accepted thousands in campaign funds from Wal-Mart in January, just as Wal-Mart poured $250,000 into the Florida Republican Party coffers last year.
Call it "hush money": Wal-Mart keeps lining its pockets with taxpayer money, and the governors agree to keep quiet about it. It's about time someone stood up to them.
