Top Spot Attracts Controversy (Editorial)

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has been under constant attack from so many sides for so long that it’s hard to remember a time when most communities actually welcomed the discount stores.

The company faces the largest sex discrimination suit in history and accusations from labor unions of illegal tactics to halt unions from getting into its stores.

Some of the attacks may well be justified; many are bogus attempts by people to get rich quick off the biggest company in the world. For some, it’s simply old-fashioned protectionism — stop the big stores from coming in and ruining their own businesses.

The newest area of attack for Wal-Mart critics — and one that bears exploration — is the number of Wal-Mart employees and their children who are dependent on the state Medicaid program for their health care insurance.

Health care and other public assistance for Wal-Mart employees costs Arkansas as much as $16 million annually, according to figures released by the state Department of Human Services. Of Wal-Mart’s 45,106 employees in the state, nearly 9 percent, or 3,971, are on public assistance — the largest group on the list.

Other states have reported even higher rates of public dependency among Wal-Mart associates — as much as 26 percent in Tennessee, where there is no concentration of well-paid executives to skew the results.

Wal-Mart officials argue, rightly, that the nation’s largest employer would top any type of list. And it is true that the employer that came in second is the state of Arkansas itself, with 3,004 of its 51,405 employees, or 5.8 percent of its work force, receiving public assistance. Other employers have even higher rates of public dependency.

The issue is not as simple as absolute numbers and percentages, of course. Are these Wal-Mart workers full- or part-time? If part-time, would they be full-time if given the option? Does Wal-Mart’s health insurance plan force workers to wait too long to enroll?

And the bigger question, of course, is the continuing inflation of health care costs, which are forcing hard decisions everywhere — in Fortune 500 executive suites, the halls of Congress, the state Capitol, small business conference rooms and even around the kitchen table.