Comments on: Paid your Wal-Mart tax yet?

By: dpb

dpb — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 14:26:35 +0000

As CP points out chutney, you are going to be paying for WalMart’s employee’s medical coverage one way or another. Either in the taxes you pay to medicare or the price you pay on WalMart’s goods. The “benefit” of having the medical costs covered through medicare versus a WalMart plan is that the cost of the coverage is split amongst all Americans in a medicare plan but only to those that shop at WalMart stores under an employer plan. I’ve got no clue how the cost difference would breakdown. As a consumer to WalMart, I would rather pay the lower prices… on the other hand, as a Libertarian, I would rather pay less taxes… basically, for me, it’s a wash.

By: CP

CP — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 22:37:41 +0000

If it cost Walmart more money to offer better insurance, and they past that cost along to the customers would anybody notice? I’m not sure. I probably wouldn’t, but I’m not a penny-pincher.

By: chutney

chutney — Sun, 19 Feb 2006 20:03:07 +0000

Forgot the NYT link in the first sentence! doh!

By: chutney

chutney — Sun, 19 Feb 2006 01:24:22 +0000

CC,

I have at least two (probably closer to ten if I were in touch with all my many cousins) family members who work at Wal-Mart. Both have some college education short of a degree. No, my uncle and my aunt would not be highly paid CPAs, but they do have marketable skills. Skills that Wal-Mart is purchasing right now.

The AJC article I linked to shows that PeachCare (Georgia’s version of Medicaid and the like) is disprortionately given to Wal-Mart employees, as compared to similar retailers. Which is to say, I am paying for their health care because Wal-Mart will not, whether Paul Krugman knows about it or not.

Dave,

Your libertarianism and my social democrat leanings aren’t going to mesh, so we’ll have to agree to disagree on whose responsibility health care coverage is.

But we have a de facto employment-based health system in the US today. And it isn’t working for my aunt or my uncle. And it didn’t work for me either growing up—I didn’t have health insurance for more than a full year total until I was in seminary and was required by law to purchase it alongside tuition—which meant I went some years without consistent treatment for a chronic health condition. Again, we can argue (fruitlessly) over whose responsibility this is. But I am quite certain that I deserve health care, and that my uncle and aunt do too.

Medicare is quite efficent, much more efficient than private health insurance systems. It isn’t as well-to-do as a PPO plan, for instance, but it took care of my four grandparents quite well. For what it does, it works very well.

I wish we could all opt into Medicare/caid somehow, and then supplement it with additional insurance plans if we wish. I’d sign up in a heartbeat.

CC,

As long as we have a de facto employment-based insurance system, large employers are (ethically) responsible for providing health coverage. Without it, my wife would be dead. What this has to do with education, poverty, and other class-ish issues, I don’t know. Wal-Mart could provide real insurance coverage tomorrow if it chose to. Many other retailers do. But it would rather sell the poor for a pair of shoes.

By: Chalicechick

Chalicechick — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 20:25:59 +0000

I like the Medicaid program. I’m happy to pay for it. But I don’t see the point in blaming a place that hires poor people with the fact that poor people tend to have few marketable skills.

A quick google search on the subject will show you that the employers with the largest number of employees on medicaid are always big box stores, grocery stores, staffing agencies and other places that hire lots of unskilled people.

There are a lot of reasons that unskilled people in general can’t afford health coverage without medicaid. Walmart isn’t on the list.

By: dpb

dpb — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 20:14:54 +0000

It is not WalMart’s responsibility to provide health coverage for its employees, it is the employees responsibility. The problem exists in the medicaid program. We should scrap it altoghether.

By: Chalicechick

Chalicechick — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 19:14:53 +0000

Is the assumption here that did these people not work at Walmart, they would be highly paid CPA’s, easily able to afford health coverage?

Because my guess is that the people who work in Walmart stores don’t have marketable skills and would likely be getting medicaid anyway.

I certainly haven’t seen a study that suggests that enrollment in medicaid goes up when Walmart comes to town. I’m pretty sure that if such a study were to exist, Paul Krugman would have told us by now.