Obamacare: Walmart to stop offering some new employees healthcare benefits
The unintended(?) consequences of Obamacare continue with the news today what Walmart will stop offering its new employees healthcare benefits:
Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, plans to begin denying health insurance to newly hired employees who work fewer than 30 hours a week, according to a copy of the company’s policy obtained by The Huffington Post.
But the news doesn’t end there because Walmart also announced that some current employees will also lose their healthcare coverage:
Under the policy, slated to take effect in January, Walmart also reserves the right to eliminate health care coverage for certain workers if their average workweek dips below 30 hours — something that happens with regularity and at the direction of company managers.
Who wants to bet that it will happen with more regularity once Obamacare is fully enacted?
Walmart is doing this because it will be cheaper for them to pay the fine for not complying with Obamacare while shifting the burden of providing these people with healthcare coverage to the federal government.
Labor and health care experts portrayed Walmart’s decision to exclude workers from its medical plans as an attempt to limit costs while taking advantage of the national health care reform known as Obamacare. Among the key features of Obamacare is an expansion of Medicaid, the taxpayer-financed health insurance program for poor people. Many of the Walmart workers who might be dropped from the company’s health care plans earn so little that they would qualify for the expanded Medicaid program, these experts said.
“Walmart is effectively shifting the costs of paying for its employees onto the federal government with this new plan, which is one of the problems with the way the law is structured,” said Ken Jacobs, chairman of the Labor Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley.
I, and many of my fellow bloggers, predicted this would happen years ago when the debate over Obamacare was still going on in the Congress and now we are seeing our predictions come true right before our eyes. They way things are going, there will be no way for such employees to ever contribute to their gold IRA. Things are shaping up to get worse in my opinion.
And this was always the true goal of Obamacare from the beginning; this is why the fine for non-compliance with Obamacare was set so low, it entices businesses to shift the burden of healthcare over to the state exchanges and then eventually over to the federal government, with the ultimate goal being a single payer system and that is where we are headed. But don’t just take my word for it:
America's Watchtower 
Your questiom mark on unintended says it all. Steve. ObanaCare was always a scam to get to universal heakth coverage paid by Uncle Sam (after he takes it from us).
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Wal Mart like many companies will NOT absorb the additional cost of Obamacare. I suspect many workers who are now working 40 hours a week will find themselves getting less than 30. Also any cost increase that hits any company will simply be passed along to the consumer. Low income people who are looking forward to “free medical care” will find themselves paying at every turn from the Big Mac they buy, to the movie they watch on the big screen, and to the gas they put in their cars. There is NO free lunch, only lying politicians who offer suckers something that only appears to be free.
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You are right about this Ron and we are already seeing some companies cutting employee hours to avoid Obamacare and the penalty. The ones getting hurt the most here are the people who voted for OBama in the first place.
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Next on the hit list will be our pensions and 401k’s… Good find with the vid. How psychic we are!
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That has been rumored before and I wouldn’t put it passed them at this point. Seeing this coming wasn’t really rocket science though, was it? 🙂
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Why does this miserable, arrogant, baloney pony riding piece of human debris always look like he slept in the back seat if a car. How can the voters of Massachusetts look themselves in the mirror? They gave us the swimmer-Ted Kennedy who opened our borders to the dregs of the third world, they gave us the gay cabellaro of health care- Barney Frank who has wreaked havoc on us with Fannie and Freddie and Obamacare and now they give us the Cherokee impersonator. Who knows what brainstorm she will have resulting in more pain and angst for the other 49 states.
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At least he is gone now and we won’t have to hear him any more, of course if he did run for reelection he would have won again.
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We can not blame the companies for not wanting to absorb the cost, but the people will. The small businesses can not pay for it so they shut down. Obamacare has done such wonders for the country, hasn’t it? You know that the welfare people would still have been getting medical coverage, so all this really does it hurt the middle income earners and that is exactly what it was intended to do. I don’t care if they say otherwise, this is what I believe…it was meant to take us down and be beholding to the government. It also gives they the right to get into our accounts.
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You are right Lou, small businesses are going to be hurt by this while the big businesses work their way around Obamacare and the people will always blame big, greedy corporations when government really is the problem. Poor people already had healthcare coverage through Medicaid so the middle will be more hurt. Of course the government wants more people reliant on the government which is why they are extending Medicaid.
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As you said, the unintended consequences may not be so unintended. This is playing out exactly how we said it would.
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Makes you wonder why people don’t listen to us, doesn’t it Larry?
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I started a post called “The American people don’t want to hear the truth” but I scrapped the post because I realized I was violating my pledge to not look back on the election, but the title says it all Lou and that is why they don’t listen. The American people want to be told that everything is okay and they don’t want to hear that a day od reckoning is coming. Maybe I will have to look at writing that post again with a few edits.
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If we knew this was going to happen then they did as well.
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I understand that something along the lines of healthcare reform had to be done, but addressing the response to the problem, instead of the problem is doomed to fail. The real goal of this so called healthcare policy is multifaced (1) To gaurante the healthcare industry a continued profit, since millions of people were getting out of work and not getting insurance (2) to force American citizens to carry the weight of government entitlment promises, such as medicare and free medical care to any in need, even if they are illegal invaders! (3) serves as an indirect meathod of taxation, since the premiums can be raised at any congrssional whim. All of this information can be garnished from Wikipedia.
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