The Wal*Marting of Wisconsin

I did not write anything about this last week, when the study came out, but Wisconsin looked at its BadgerCare program, which is designed to provide health insurance to the working poor. Turns out, 40% of the people enrolled in BadgerCare from the 10 biggest employers with employees in the program worked at Wal*Mart.

This should not come as a surprise to anyone who has been following the news lately. As I have noted before, an average Wal*Mart store with 200 employees costs the federal government $420,750 annually. With over 100 stores in Wisconsin, our taxpayers are subsidizing Wal*Mart to the tune of nearly half a billion dollars. Now we find that Wal*Marts across the state are also costing Wisconsin taxpayers $2 million a year in BadgerCare costs alone. Add in other tax subsidies specific to Wal*Mart, on top of the state's already-low taxes on business, and you can see that Wal*Mart is quite the leech.

Wisconsin lawmakers seem to be catching on:

Lawmakers must fill a $650 million funding gap in Medicaid over the next two years. They said part of the discussion on bridging that gap is expected to be aimed at changing BadgerCare, the health care program for low-income families. [. . .]

Assembly Speaker John Gard (R-[Sun Prairie]) said BadgerCare reforms "certainly will be part of the budget discussion." Rep. Scott Jensen (R-Town of Brookfield) added that the goal would be to "undo the financial incentive" for companies to push workers on BadgerCare. "You could require that by saying companies with a health insurance plan with and certain means would have to pay toward the premium," Jensen said. [. . .]

As long as BadgerCare provides cheaper coverage than what many companies can offer, the program is more than the option of last choice, Rep. Kitty Rhoades (R-Hudson) said. "We didn't set out to become an insurance company," Rhoades said.

Now, to be fair, the Wal*Mart employees and dependents are only about 1.5% of all BadgerCare recipients, and those receiving BadgerCare represent only 3% of Wal*Mart employees in the state. (A fellow Milwaukeean has done this math for all of the top ten.) Yet, it seems unfathomable to me that a company with nearly $300 billion in revenue can't afford the $2 million (or less--BadgerCare cuts off if your employer covers 80% of your costs) to cover their workers here. Even extrapolated across the country, $100 or $200 million for health care wouldn't kill them.

But let us also recall that this is a bigger problem than just Wal*Mart. There are other companies on that list--even Aurora Health Care, for pete's sake--and not all of them are evil incarnate. The fact is, the root of the problem is our too-expensive system of insuring and caring for people. The U.S. spends more than double what any other industrialized country does on health care, without double the results (read every word at that link--it's worth the time). It's like a team with the New York Yankees' payroll consistently getting beaten by the Milwaukee Brewers. I firmly believe that if it were cheaper for employers to provide health care, more would. I also firmly believe that as long as the state (and the State) refuses to take action to cut costs, employers will find ways to pass those costs on to the state.

This is one reason why a couple of weeks ago, I argued for rethinking the minimum wage. So what if we can pay people a little more, if they don't get health care and the state has to subsidize them through BadgerCare? (A full-time worker at $8.50 an hour still qualifies for BadgerCare.) There is no advantage to that. We need comprehensive economic reform, with the needs of the worker superceding the needs of business. After all, business certainly isn't, in general, looking out for their employees anymore. We need to bring back strong unions, affordable health care, and tax policies that reward work rather than wealth. The $100 billion Walton family doesn't want for health care, and I bet they pay a lower percentage of their net worth in taxes than I do, or your average BadgerCare recipient.

Let me be clear: I think Wal*Mart needs to be paying more of its fair share. But I also think that it is incumbent upon the state and federal governments to make it easier for Wal*Mart to do that, and for Wal*Mart's workers to afford to live on a Wal*Mart salary. As long as we sit on our hands--or spin our wheels chasing distractions--the health care gap will widen, the wealth gap will widen, and the economic powerhouse that is the United States will keep collapsing from the inside.

(For more on Wal*Mart's evilness, see everything here.)