Walmart Bails On Obamacare-Sticks Taxpayers With Employee Healthcare Costs

forbes ^ | december 9, 2012 | rick ungar

[lowbridge]

After making a big deal of publicly supporting the Affordable Care Act, Walmart—the nation’s largest private sector employer—is joining the ranks of companies seeking to avoid their obligation to provide employees with health insurance as required by Obamacare.

It was not all that many years ago that Walmart announced, in response to harsh criticism over the low pay provided to Walmart ‘associates’, that the company would provide a healthcare benefit to its part-time, low earning employees. The uncharacteristically generous nod to worker needs was short lived as the company partially pulled back on the commitment in 2011, citing premium rate increases that Walmart deemed beyond their capacity to pay.

Now, Huffington Post is reporting that the party is over for many more existing Walmart employees, along with all employees hired after February 1, 2012 that the company can classify as “part-time.”

According to the 2013 Walmart “Associate’s Benefit Book”—the manual for low-level Walmart employees—part-time workers who got their jobs during or after 2011 will now be subject to an “Annual Benefits Eligibility Check” each August.

Employees hired after Feb. 1, 2012, who fail to average the magic 30-hours per week requiring a company to provide a healthcare benefit, will lose their healthcare benefits on the following January. Part-time workers hired after Jan. 15, 2011, but before Feb. 1, 2012, will be able to hang onto their Walmart health care benefit if they work at least 24 hours a week.

Anyone hired before 2011 will not be cut off from the company provided health insurance.

[Conservativegreatgrandma]

I've said it before and I'll say it again--you are the one without a conscience. You were perfectly happy to play a role in the reelection of Barack HUSSEIN Obama.

Tom, how do you support your family?

[EternalVigilance]

You have as much right to know anything I don’t want to tell you about my family as you do to coerce my conscience politically. Which is ZERO.

[deport]

Would you deny those who voted for me their right to vote for someone who actually represents what they believe?

---

I didn’t allude to anyone not voting their beliefs? Where the hell did you get that.

I only said your vote totals wouldn’t have changed the outcome in any state that I’ve seen.

[EternalVigilance]

Whatever.

[wita]

“It is not about the “perception of fair,” it is about what creates work and jobs. The sooner Americans get back to that concept, the sooner we get our country out of this mess”.

IMHO the laws of economics are just as hard and fast as the laws of physics. You can choose to ignore them at your peril.

Fairness has absolutely nothing to do with it despite the whining from the Socialists, social engineers, and the so called purveyors of social justice.

[wita]

“Walmart is not the problem there; foodstamps are”.

...and the list goes on and on and on. Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, Wick, heartless as it may seem to the emotional left, sticking to the intent of the founders and the Constitution is the only thing that is going to save the Republic and thus the majority of the people sustaining the Republic now. The rest will be dragged kicking and screaming along for the ride screaming it isn’t fair.

So who is it that is willing to sink the ship of state for the needs and wants of a few welfare recipients?

The question is rhetorical. The answer is telling.