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Wal-Mart makes also its
home state tax payers foot health care bills Once again, Wal-Mart is caught for making taxpayers finance health care for its worker families, costs which are normally covered by employer-financed insurance. This time, getting caught is even more embarrassing to the retail giant than before as this is in its home state, Arkansas. The Department of Human Services in Little Rock, Arkansas has established that 3,971 Wal-Mart workers received public assistance, this is 8.9 per cent of the total workforce in the state. With this, Wal-Mart tops the list of employers who dump health care - or other social - expenses on taxpayers. There is already a pattern emerging which shows that the denial of affordable health care for its workers and their children is an important component of Wal-Mart's social dumping concept. The company tops the list of the health insurance evaders in a long range of states, and new examples emerge at an increasing pace. In some states, angry legislators intend to tax the company instead of subventioning it by carrying health care costs through their strained Medicaid budgets. Wal-Mart and its 'walmartization' concept - low wages, poor benefits and a lack of affordable healthcare - contributes in an important way to the health care crisis for large and growing number of American working families. The Bentonville-based multinational's shadow was clearly visible in the background when 70,000 Californian commercial workers held the line for their health care in a bitter four month strike last year. |
