Wal-Mart offers record on health care

Wal-Mart offers record on health care

	Published : Thu, 11 Jan 2007 20:20 By : Agencies Print this Story

BENTONVILLE, Ark. (AFX) - The booster shot that Wal-Mart gave to its company-arranged health insurance has increased enrollment only slightly, with fewer than half of the retailer's eligible employees signing up for plans tweaked twice in the past 16 months.

Figures released by the world's largest retailer Thursday showed that 47 percent of its eligible employees are covered by its health plans. A year ago, it was 46 percent; in 2005, just 43 percent of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. workers were covered by company-arranged health insurance, Wal-Mart claims. But union-backed WakeUpWalMart.com said the enrollment figures in Wal-Mart's latest report conflict with numbers attributed to them in media reports over the past two years, and are actually lower.

'Whatever numbers you use, the fact is there is a consistent upward trend' in the percentage of employees with Wal-Mart health coverage, said Linda Dillman, the company's executive vice president of benefits. 'Over the past three years, we have seen steady increases in associates who take our plans.'

Wal-Mart has 1.34 million employees in the United States. Dillman said that the numbers of workers covered vary throughout the year because of turnover and seasonal changes in employment levels.

The company said 43 percent of its workers have coverage through a spouse, their parents or through Medicaid.

The number for people with outside coverage came from a survey of 200,000 workers, which was then extrapolated to cover the rest of the work force, Wal-Mart said in a release.

Since October 2005, Wal-Mart has shortened its eligibility period, allowed part-time workers to cover children, lowered premiums and lowered co-pays for prescription drugs. The package has been a lightning rod for unions and other critics who charge that Wal-Mart skimps on benefits.

Opponents say that Wal-Mart's latest moves to improve its health care plan are undermined by the company's much less publicized plan to rely on more part-time workers, who are less expensive than full-time workers.

'The brutal truth is that Wal-Mart's health care crisis has worsened. The percentage of Wal-Mart workers without company health care has actually increased, but rather than be embarrassed at their health care failures, Wal-Mart is trying to brag that leaving well over half of your employees and their families without company health care is improvement. What an absolute disgrace,' WakeUpWalMart spokesman Chris Kofinis said.

Another union-backed group, Wal-Mart Watch, said an increase of 1 percentage point in the number of employees covered was not much to crow about after a year of touting improved benefits.

'Wal-Mart's health care plan is a raw deal for its employees, and that's why a majority of them aren't enrolling,' Wal-Mart Watch spokesman Nu Wexler said.

In its latest statement, Wal-Mart said that as of Jan. 1, 47.4 percent of its 1.34 million U.S. employees were on company health plans. Of that total work force, 1.02 million people were eligible to enroll last fall and 636,391 employees did so, Wal-Mart said.

Wal-Mart said 76 percent of its work force was eligible for health benefits in the recent open enrollment period, compared to 59 percent of workers in the retail sector as a whole, according to a 2006 Kaiser Family Foundation survey.

Wal-Mart said its survey of workers in the last enrollment period found that among those employees taking coverage for the first time, 53 percent said they were previously uninsured.