NEW YORK TIMES: In an earnings call last week, Walmart announced that its workers weresigning up for health insurance en masse. The news was bad for the company’s shareholders, since the added $500 million it will cost to cover them will eat into expected profits. But it also means that many more low-income families have health insurance now than did last year…
The law’s best-known and least-liked provision — the “individual mandate” — is probably causing the trend. For the first time, people must buy insurance this year or be subject to a tax penalty. In Massachusetts, a similar requirement changed the employer-sponsored insurance market in two ways, said Sharon Long, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, who has studied the state’s experience.
First, it encouraged more workers who were already being offered health insurance to take it — an effect roughly analogous to what Walmart is experiencing. Second, it actually induced more employers to offer coverageto their workers — because, Ms. Long believes, workers began to demand insurance once they were required to have it. Over all, the percentage of Massachusetts residents with employer-based insurance went to 65.6 percent in 2008, when the health care law was up and running, up from 61 percent in 2006… (more)
