Editorial: Health care shouldn’t be optional

Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2004 | 8:53 a.m.

A number of states, including Nevada, increasingly are showing that they're concerned about the high percentage of workers who lack health insurance. Legislation that would have required large grocery stores, including those run by Wal-Mart, to provide basic health insurance passed in the state Assembly last year but died in the Senate. We'll be watching with interest then as Californians vote today on a ballot question that would require large companies to offer affordable health insurance for their workers. One of the companies fighting this ballot question is Wal-Mart, whose meager health benefits are helping fuel the initiative.

To get a sense of just how poorly Wal-Mart treats its employees, it's illustrative to look at one of its discount-retail competitors, Costco. A story in Monday's New York Times noted that Wal-Mart asks employees to cover 33 percent of the costs for its health care plans. Add to that the low salaries that Wal-Mart pays, and it's not surprising that only 45 percent of its work force can afford the company's health insurance plan. Costco, in contrast, not only pays better wages but it also requires its employees to pay just 8 percent of its health insurance plan, so that, not so coincidentally, 96 percent of its employees enroll in its health plan.

Wall Street analysts who can see nothing more than the corporate bottom line naturally love Wal-Mart's stinginess, but we wish more employers would share Costco's enlightened policy that treats its employees with dignity. Government is strained, too, when Wal-Mart's philosophy is embraced. If businesses don't pay for their employees' health insurance, government-run hospitals that provide care for the indigent and for those without health insurance have to absorb the costs. Ultimately, taxpayers must pick up the tab, which means that we end up subsidizing the greed of Wal-Mart and other like-minded companies -- and they end up laughing all the way to the bank.