Wal-Mart to expand health coverage benefits for its employees

Like Microsoft, Wal-Mart is an American success story, and that's too much to handle for those on the left-side of the political aisle. Wal-Mart employs a non-union workforce, which further fuels the ire of liberals.

Union membership as a percentage of the American workforce has been declining for decades, from to high of 34 percent in the 1950s to just 12.5 percent in 2006.

Surely Wal-Mart can't be blamed for this steep decline.

Wal-Mart is regularly accused of being stingy with its health insurance offerings. That accusation is inaccurate, as National Review Editor Rich Lowry noted two years ago:

More than 90 percent of Wal-Mart employees have health insurance. Half of those get their insurance through the company, and the rest through other means, whether their parents, or spouse, or Medicare. Many Wal-Mart employees are young people or semi-retired, and thus aren't supporting families. Employment there can be an escalator to success. Two-thirds of the stores' managers are former hourly employees.

Still, Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott will announce on Sunday in a speech to the National Governors Association a big improvement in health care benefits for employees, both full and part-time, of the company.

From Bloomberg News:

The world's largest retailer will allow more workers to become eligible for the lowest cost health plan, cut the waiting period for part-timers and allow their children to be covered. Wal-Mart will more than quadruple the number of clinics this year after opening nine in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Florida and Indiana last year.

Of course, many employers offer part-timers no health care benefits at all.

MarketWatch adds a little more:

The world's largest retailer signed up more than 70,000 associates who lacked health insurance in a recent open enrollment, according to Scott's (upcoming) speech, and "this is just a start."

The linked articles about Wal-Mart's upcoming benefits announcement include criticism of Wal-Mart. But none of the pieces, including ones I didn't link to that I came across, were gleeful in their disdain. Leave it to the New York Times to go the extra mile. From Michael Barbaro's article in Thursday's Newspaper of Record:

The groups have tried, with apparent success, to turn Wal-Mart into a symbol of what is wrong with American health care, triggering legislation in numerous states that is directed squarely at Wal-Mart.

Friend-of-the-blog and fellow Illinoisan Crazy Politico was ahead of Barbaro in covering this story--read about it here.

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