Plan dies to push worker health care

BOISE – Despite tough talk earlier this session, the 2006 Legislature won’t follow Maryland’s lead in forcing employers, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., to boost health care benefits for workers this year.

House Speaker Bruce Newcomb, R-Burley, and Senate Minority Leader Clint Stennett, D-Ketchum, told the Associated Press more time is needed to study a state report meant to show how often employees of various companies show up in Medicaid health care programs for low-income families with children.

That’s in part because the Idaho Department of Commerce and Labor, which helped the state Health and Welfare Department compile the report, hasn’t released the names of the companies, citing privacy concerns.

A copy of the report obtained by the AP shows records from 352 businesses, with nearly 215,000 employees.

All the names of the businesses have been encrypted.

“It’s dead this year,” said Newcomb, who originally requested the study on Wal-Mart, Albertsons Inc., Kroger Inc. and Safeway Stores.

The issue rose to prominence when Maryland passed a law requiring companies with more than 10,000 employees to spend at least 8 percent of payroll on health insurance. Those that don’t must pay the difference into a fund for health care for low-income residents.

Newcomb is concerned that health care assistance programs may be underwriting health care for Wal-Mart employees, giving that business an advantage over rivals.

Albertsons, based in Boise, was sold late last year to Super Valu Inc. after struggling to compete.

Wal-Mart officials said laws like Maryland’s unfairly single out a company that employs 1.3 million people across America and provides 18 different health plans for more than 900,000 workers and family members.

“These special interest, employer-mandate bills do nothing to address the real issues that all employers, not just Wal-Mart, are dealing with: cost and affordability,” said Kelly Hobbs, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman in Washington, D.C. “They threaten jobs and slow economic growth that benefits working families and communities.”

In Washington state’s recently concluded legislative session, although many Democrats backed a proposal that would force companies like Wal-Mart to pay a percentage of their employees’ health care tab, the bill faced opposition among Democratic leadership and minority Republicans and never got a vote.

On Feb. 26, Wal-Mart Chief Executive Officer Lee Scott conceded at the National Governors Association meeting in Washington, D.C., that the company’s insurance plans aren’t perfect. The company recently expanded new low-cost insurance programs it began offering last year, he said then.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 17 percent of Idaho residents – roughly 240,000 people – were uninsured in 2004. Medicaid costs here have grown at an 18 percent annual clip since 1998. Idaho spends about $330 million in state money annually to cover 180,000 people on Medicaid.