Dive Brief:
- Wal-Mart has emerged as a key corporate ally to President Barack Obama, who once said he would never be found shopping in one of its stores, according to an August 29 article in Bloomberg.
- Wal-Mart came out in support of healthcare reform, along with the Center for American Progress and the Service Employees International Union, in a June 2009 letter addressed to President Obama.
- ACA subsidies and Medicaid expansion allowed Wal-Mart to stop offering health insurance to more than 30,000 part-time employees, Bloomberg reported.
Dive Insight:
Shortly after President Obama entered office in 2009, he and Wal-Mart formed a mutually beneficial alliance. Wal-Mart’s support provided the president with ammunition against claims that his healthcare agenda was hostile to business. Healthcare reform allowed Wal-Mart to drop insurance coverage for part-time employees, who could sign up for Medicaid or subsidized insurance on ACA exchanges, without drawing criticism.
“The pressure is off Wal-Mart to provide better health insurance to its own employees,” Nelson Lichtenstein, director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told Bloomberg. “If you’re a single mom and work at Wal-Mart you now qualify for Medicaid.”
Wal-Mart has also been supportive of other healthcare initiatives affiliated with the Obama administration. In January 2011, Wal-Mart announced it would collaborate with First Lady Michelle Obama on her Let’s Move! campaign by offering a wider selection of nutritious products at low cost.