Please don't shop at Wal-Mart - part 15

It's getting worse. I just got an email from WakeUpWalMart.com and here's what it says:

The Wal-Mart health care crisis is getting worse.

According to internal Wal-Mart documents, just released by WakeUpWalMart.com, Wal-Mart plans to slash health care costs by eliminating all of its low-deductible health care plans for new hires, increasing medical premiums on its existing plans, and increasing the spousal surcharge to a whopping $1,800 a year in order to push more employees off of the company health care plan.

By eliminating most of its health care plans and replacing them with a high-deductible, catastrophic plan, Wal-Mart is effectively out of the health care business and will, instead, shift its health care costs onto its hard-working employees and America's taxpayers.

The time has come for Congress to get involved. As our nation's largest employer, with over 1.39 million employees, Wal-Mart's departure from providing real health care threatens our entire employer-based health care system. We cannot allow big, powerful corporations like Wal-Mart to make record profits, $11 billion last year, and fail to provide company health care to over half (750,000) of its employees and their families.

Please join us in calling on Congress to immediately investigate and hold hearings on Wal-Mart's role in America's growing health care crisis. Congress should immediately examine:

1. The potential negative impact of Wal-Mart’s decision to replace real health care plans with catastrophic plans on its employees and America's working families.
2. The cost to taxpayers when large, profitable companies fail to provide affordable health care.
3. The risk to our entire employer-based health care system if the rest of corporate America follows Wal-Mart’s lead.

Please send a letter to your U.S. Senator or Congressman calling on them to hold hearings on the Wal-Mart health care crisis today:
Write a letter to Congress now!

Despite an overwhelming majority of Americans calling on profitable companies like Wal-Mart to provide real health care coverage to their employees, Wal-Mart is cruelly hurting its employees, cutting health care options, and shifting costs on to the American taxpayer.

The Wal-Mart health care crisis, which is the fact that Wal-Mart fails to provide company health care to 54% of its employees, already costs America's taxpayers an estimated $1.39 billion every year. And, even Wal-Mart admits that nearly 1 out of every 2 children (46%) of its employees is either uninsured or on taxpayer funded public assistance.

Under Wal-Mart's 2007 health care plan options, the only plan available to new hires will have a $1,000 deductible and multiple, and expensive, extra deductibles piled on top including a $300 pharmacy deductible, a $1,000 per event in-patient deductible, and a $500 per event out-patient deductible. For family coverage, if you add in premiums and deductibles, a $12,000 a year cashier may have to spend up to 90% of his/her salary just to pay for health care.

There's no way to say it gently. This is just wrong, wrong, wrong.

I suppose there's one thing to hope for if other companies go the way of Wal-Mart and severely reduce or even eliminate health care for their employees. Maybe the employer-based health care system in this country will completely collapse and the politicians will have to see that a single-payer government health care system is the way to go. But so many people will suffer and die before the people in power finally wake up.