Walmart Health Plan Better Than ObamaCare Exchange Plans
Despite the fact that unions and activists have called Walmart’s health plan “substandard” and claimed that the company does not provide health benefits, Walmart’s health plan is more affordable and provides much better access to quality care than does ObamaCare, says Richard Pollock in the Washington Examiner.
The National Association of Health Underwriters and health policy experts compared the two plans.
- W
almart offers its employees three options: a Health Reimbursement Account (HRA), an HRA High plan (which has higher out-of-pocket costs but lower deductibles), and a Health Savings Account plan (a high-deductible but tax-advantaged plan). - An HRA plan has individual monthly premiums as low as $40 (and family coverage for $160 per month) for a full-service BlueCross BlueShield preferred provider organization.
- Walmart’s plan has no income eligibility requirements, does not change depending upon age and gender, and all of its 1.1 million employees — from cashiers to the CEO — have the same plan.
Unsubsidized ObamaCare enrollees, on the other hand, will see monthly premiums that are five to nine times higher than Walmart premiums, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association:
- A Walmart premium for a nonsmoking, 60-year-old couple would cost $134 per month. The unsubsidized ObamaCare premium for that same couple could cost $1,365 per month.
- Similarly, a family of four could pay a $962 premium under ObamaCare but only a $160 premium under the Walmart plan.
- For a 30-year-old smoker, ObamaCare could cost up to $428 per month, while a Walmart employee would pay $70 per month.
Moreover, Walmart employees have access to eight of the United States’ most prestigious hospitals, including the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic. Most ObamaCare exchange plans do not have access to these hospitals.
Walmart also provides much better access for its employees.
- In Chicago, the BlueChoice ObamaCare exchange network only has 28 hospitals, while the Walmart network has 54 hospitals.
- Similarly, Chicago has 9,837 doctors under ObamaCare, while the Walmart network provides access to 24,904 doctors.
From Daily Policy Digest.
I’ve always thought that Walmart could distribute medicine services far more efficiently than our current system. If you think about it, Walmart provides a service — otherwise known as retail distribution. It has huge economies of scale and has a business model where it distributes and sell goods by utilizing semi-skilled labor. If Walmart can train unskilled people to do certain tasks efficiently, maybe Healthmart could train lesser-skilled people to run diagnostic tests.
Ouch, even the Great Satan Walmart is better than Obamacare.
The left must cringe when they hear that.
I know I do. THe king of cost-cutting has a better plan than the government.
Always low prices… Guaranteed.
The Great Satan does not mandate participation in its labor force or its clientele.
I can see why I’d emigrate because of Obamacare, but not because of Walmartcare.
Indeed, Brazil, like most countries of the world, would LOVE to import Walmart wholesale. They are much less accepting of Obama or Obamacare, to say the least.
They can use some of their enormous profits to help subsidize the costs, so I’m not surprised its so affordable.
The question is, how much is really paid for by company profits and how much is just good insurance engineering.
“A Walmart premium for a nonsmoking, 60-year-old couple would cost $134 per month. The unsubsidized ObamaCare premium for that same couple could cost $1,365 per month.”
Now that’s amazing.
I wonder how the subsidies would change it, though I doubt it would make much of a difference.
Another nail in the coffin.
We can only hope.
Too little, too late in my eyes.
You’re right. People should have woken up long before.
Wow, it looks like Walmart really does always have low prices.
They only are able to get that by exploiting workers and suppliers.
They only are able to get that by exploiting workers and suppliers for the benefit of Americans everywhere.
Fixed that sentence for you.
Just goes to show that employer based health insurance works better.
Wow. So many aliases.