Lowry repeated misleading Wal-Mart health care defense
SUMMARY: National Review editor Rich Lowry repeated the misleading claim that "only about 5 percent of Wal-Mart employees are on Medicaid, the same proportion as other retailers."
In his December 6 column, National Review editor Rich Lowry, in an effort to refute claims made in the documentary, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, argued that Wal-Mart is not "a welfare queen," repeating the misleading claim that "only about 5 percent of Wal-Mart employees are on Medicaid, the same proportion as other retailers." Lowry did not note that an internal Wal-Mart memo acknowledges that 27 percent of children of Wal-Mart employees are enrolled in Medicaid or the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). According to researchers at the University of California-Berkeley's Center for Labor Research and Education, that figure is significantly greater than the percentage for all large retailers, as is the total percentage of children of Wal-Mart employees who either are on Medicaid or SCHIP or are uninsured.
From Lowry's December 6 column:
Although The High Cost attacks Wal-Mart as a welfare queen, only about 5 percent of Wal-Mart employees are on Medicaid, the same proportion as other retailers. [New York University visiting scholar Jason] Furman points out [in a report titled, Wal-Mart: A Progressive Success Story]that a Wal-Mart worker who has to decide whether to buy the company's family insurance policy at a cost of $1,800 annually or take Medicaid coverage instead is wise to go on Medicaid. "The beneficiary of choosing Medicaid is the worker," Furman writes, "not Wal-Mart."
Like Washington Post columnist Sebastian Mallaby and New York Times columnist John Tierney, who have offered similar misleading defenses of Wal-Mart, Lowry based his column largely on Furman's paper. (Mallaby and Tierney apparently relied on a preliminary version of Furman's paper dated November 14; Furman released a revised version dated November 28.) In his paper on Wal-Mart, Furman did state that "[i]n total, ... 5 percent of Wal-Mart employees are on Medicaid, which is similar to the percentage for other large retailers and is comparable to the national average of 4 percent." Furman's source for this comparison was an internal memo written by M. Susan Chambers, Wal-Mart's executive vice president for benefits. The New York Times reported on the memo in an October 26 article.
But in his column, Lowry omitted a different figure that Furman included in the revised, November 28, version of his paper: Citing the Chambers memo, Furman noted that 27 percent of the children of Wal-Mart employees are enrolled in Medicaid or SCHIP.* According to the memo, the national average for all employers is 22 percent. Chambers's memo further stated that "[i]n total, 46 percent of [Wal-Mart] Associates' children are either on Medicaid [or SCHIP] or are uninsured" -- a fact not noted by either Furman or Lowry.
In a supporting exhibit, Chambers's memo claimed that 36 percent of all retail employees' children are on Medicaid or SCHIP -- a figure that exceeds Wal-Mart's 27 percent. Citing the memo, Furman repeated these figures.
However, as Media Matters for America has noted, an October 26 paper by researchers at UC-Berkeley's Center for Labor Research and Education presents a very different conclusion. Using data from the 2005 Current Population Survey, the UC-Berkeley researchers "analyzed the difference between Wal-Mart's reported numbers and those for large retailers in general (defined as those with 1,000 or more workers)." They found that "22% of children of employees of large retailers are enrolled in Medicaid/SCHIP, compared to 27% reported by Wal-Mart for their employees' children." In contrast to Wal-Mart's claim, the UC-Berkeley researchers reported that only 22.7 percent of children of all retail employees are enrolled in Medicaid or SCHIP. Additionally, they noted, "While 46% of the children of Wal-Mart workers are either uninsured or on Medicaid/SCHIP, the comparable figure for children of all large retail workers is 29%."
* A previous Media Matters item referring to Mallaby's November 28 column and Tierney's November 29 column (subscription required) stated: "Furman, Mallaby, and Tierney all failed to reveal that in that same paragraph of the Chambers memo [noting that 5 percent of Wal-Mart employees are enrolled in Medicaid], Chambers acknowledged that children of Wal-Mart employees receive Medicaid or SCHIP at a significantly higher rate than the national employer average." Mallaby and Tierney's columns apparently cited the November 14 preliminary version of Furman's paper, which did not include data on the percentage of Wal-Mart employees' children enrolled in Medicaid or SCHIP. The November 28 version of Furman's paper does provide this data.
The insurance may seem like a bargain to you in abstract terms, Oscar, but by my calculations, a person making federal minimum wage makes about $892 a month gross, and would be left with $742 dollars for the month after buying insurance. Of course, that's before taxes - they would be paying payroll and state and local taxes even if their income is too low to pay federal income tax.
Most families at that income level will have to forgo insurance for themselves (most healthy adults do not qualify for Medicaid), and sign their kids up for Medicaid because what's left would just not cover, food, housing, utilities, transportation, and childcare. Actually, it still doesn't cover basic expenses, but gets them slightly closer. You can talk about it being a low percentage of their income, but they still have to try to stretch what they make to pay the basics.
I understand that there are people who think that is nobody else's problem, but regardless, it's important to be realistic about the numbers.
I'm not sure about the federal vs regional thing, oscar. I can see what you mean about the differences between regions, but I also think some things actually become more efficient when you have economies of scale. Perhaps something more on the lines of how Medicaid is run at the present time, with some federal guidelines and parceling out of federal money, but details worked out at the state level.
While I understand caution about government programs, I just don't see any other way to do it. The problem with the private sector and health care is that it is much more difficult for market forces to prevail than in other types of purchase decisions. There's a reason it takes so long to get a medical education, so the average consumer has to try to make decisions that are often way beyond their ability to comprehend without a medical degree. Plus what happens when you are rushed to the emergency room and you are on the table for an emergency bypass operation...do you ask how much it is and then go elsewhere if you don't like the price? Much more difficult to comparison shop when buying medical care than when you are buying a DVD player.
As far as who will pay for it, I could see it being like insurance with a sliding scale premium schedule and perhaps price breaks for demonstrated preventive measures like exercise and abstention from known health risks. There is a lot of waste and inefficiency in the current healthcare system and I think eliminating that might go a long way toward making such a program affordable.
Though I understand your point about the out-of-pocket expenses encouraging healthy behavior, I don't actually think it works that way when you are paying for treatment for illness. There is usually a lot of time between unhealthy behaviors and their consequences, so I think you are better off encouraging it by decreasing premiums for evidence of healthy behavior (maintaining a healthy weight, exercising, not smoking). I realize, however, that there would be a lot of controversy concerning such a schedule of incentives.