Wal-Mart adds to health plans for employees
NEW YORK - Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the largest private employer in the United States, is expanding the number of healthcare plans it offers employees and giving discounts on some types of coverage in an effort to blunt criticism about benefits.
US workers will also be able to pay $4 for a month's supply of any of 2,400 generic prescription drugs, saving them $25 million next year, the company said yesterday. Those who enroll in Wal-Mart's Value Plan, introduced last year, will receive a credit of $100, $250, or $500 for each covered family member.
Labor and political leaders have criticized Wal-Mart's health plans for being too expensive and have supported legislation to mandate certain benefits. Last year, the world's largest retailer shortened wait times to enroll in health coverage and started offering family plans to part-time workers.
"It's a marked improvement from Wal-Mart's previous plan," said Nu Wexler, a spokesman for the advocacy group Wal-Mart Watch, which generally is critical of the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer. Healthcare costs "remain a huge burden" for Wal-Mart employees, Wexler said.
Wal-Mart Watch, based in Washington, is a coalition of labor, environmental, religious, and community groups.
Company spokeswoman Sarah Clark said the $25 million in employee savings from the generic drug plan was a "conservative" estimate and based on the number of generics used by workers or their families today.
Wal-Mart a year ago started selling a month's supply of some common generic drugs for $4 after offering workers $3 prescriptions on about 20 generics. Wal-Mart rolled out the $4 retail program, which now includes 331 items, at all its pharmacies in November.
The world's largest retailer, with almost 1.4 million full- and part-time workers in the United States, has been criticized for offering stingy benefits and in some communities has faced efforts to legislate what it pays for employees' healthcare.
In July 2006, a federal judge overturned a Maryland law requiring large companies, in particular Wal-Mart, to spend at least 8 percent of payroll on health benefits. The same month, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley vetoed a city ordinance that would have required certain retailers, including Wal-Mart, to increase their minimum wage.
Chief executive H. Lee Scott has joined with two labor unions and other corporations in calling for an overhaul of the US healthcare system that would guarantee universal coverage by 2012. He's working with Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, a frequent critic of the company and chairman of the board of Wal-Mart Watch.
In the US retail industry, 44 percent of workers have health coverage through their employers, according to the 2007 Employer Health Benefits report issued by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Health Research and Education Trust. Retail workers wait an average of three months to be eligible for their companies' plans, according to Kaiser.
At Wal-Mart, wait times are six months for full-timers. For part-time workers, Wal-Mart cut the wait period in half last year, to 12 months.
Twenty-four percent of employers with health plans offer coverage to part-time workers, Kaiser says. As of January, 47 percent of Wal-Mart workers were enrolled in a company healthcare plan.
