{"id":6465,"date":"2006-01-28T09:12:51","date_gmt":"2006-01-28T14:12:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6465"},"modified":"2006-01-28T09:12:51","modified_gmt":"2006-01-28T14:12:51","slug":"wal-marts-health-care-problems-reach-washington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wal-marts-health-care-problems-reach-washington\/","title":{"rendered":"Wal-Mart&#8217;s health care problems reach Washington"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this month, Wal-Mart lost a key political battle when lawmakers in Maryland overrode a gubernatorial veto and effectively required Wal-Mart to spend more <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2006\/01\/12\/AR2006011201251.html\">on employee health care<\/a>. The retail behemoth&#8217;s biggest concern was how many <a href=\"http:\/\/www.realcities.com\/mld\/krwashington\/news\/nation\/13622360.htm\">other states<\/a> would follow suit. The fears are well-founded &#8212; Wal-Mart now has to worry about <a href=\"http:\/\/seattletimes.nwsource.com\/html\/politics\/2002758209_report24m.html\">Washington state<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>More than 3,100 Wal-Mart employees in Washington were benefiting from state-subsidized health coverage throughout 2004 &#8212; nearly double the total for any other company, according to two confidential state reports.<\/p>\n<p>That total is much higher than previously thought. And it indicates that as many as 20 percent of Wal-Mart&#8217;s employees were getting taxpayer-funded health care for themselves or their dependents.<\/p>\n<p>The reports are sure to fuel the debate over a labor-backed push in the Legislature to require companies such as Wal-Mart to pay more for health care. Democrats in the House and Senate say the reports show that Wal-Mart and some other big companies are shifting millions of dollars in health-care costs to the state.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think taxpayers should be outraged,&#8221; Rep. Steve Conway, D-Tacoma, said Monday. &#8220;They are subsidizing one of the wealthiest corporations in the world.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>How soon will we see Wal-Mart embrace a publicly-financed single-payer system? I&#8217;d say it gets more likely all the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this month, Wal-Mart lost a key political battle when lawmakers in Maryland overrode a gubernatorial veto and effectively required Wal-Mart to spend more on employee health care. The retail behemoth&#8217;s biggest concern was how many other states would follow suit. The fears are well-founded &#8212; Wal-Mart now has to worry about Washington state. More [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6465\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}