(MintPress) – Residents in California could find themselves being lectured about health insurance at the most unlikely of places: their local Walmart.
It’s all part of a statewide initiative to expose consumers to health care options in the light of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which requires that all Americans be covered under a health insurance plan.
Under the new initiative, Walmart employees would provide customers with information about their health care options, and in some cases assist in the purchase of private insurance packages subsidized by the federal government.
While even some Walmart critics are standing up for its sponsorship of health care information dispersal, union leaders are scoffing at the retail giant’s attempt to promote health insurance, something it doesn’t even provide its hourly paid employees.
“We are appalled and offended that the exchange would contemplate partnering with Walmart and other retailers notorious for failing to provide health benefits to many of their workers and providing substandard benefits to the workers who do qualify,” James Araby, director of United Food and Commercial Workers Union’s Western States Council told the LA Times. “That is highly contradictory to the mission of the program.”
It wasn’t too long ago when Walmart was among the nation’s businesses attempting to skirt around ACA provisions that required companies to provide health insurance to full-time employees. In January, Walmart enacted a policy of hiring workers for weekly shifts of 30 hours and under, eliminating the corporation’s obligation to provide coverage.
At that time, critics not only opposed Walmart for its arguably unethical behavior, but called it out for passing the cost for health coverage onto the general public.
“Walmart is effectively shifting the costs of paying for its employees onto the federal government with the new plan, which is one of the problems with the way the law is structured,” University of California-Berkeley Labor Research Center Chairman Ken Jacobs told the Huffington Post.
Jacob’s department released a report indicating Walmart was costing the state more than $32 million a year for health-related expenses caused by its employees who lacked employer health care coverage. The report, “Hidden Cost of Wal-Mart Jobs: Use of Safety Net Programs by Walmart Workers in California,” also indicated the state paid out $86 million in public assistance to Walmart employees.
However, some who have earned the reputation as critics of Walmart for this very reason are putting their disdain aside on this issue.
“Walmart isn’t a white knight,” University of California, Santa Barbara history professor told the LA Times. “But I am in favor of anything that gets people enrolled. Put a table in Walmart, Best Buy, Costco and CVS pharmacies. I’m for it all.”