South Carolina Healthcare Voices

If you think about who is on Medicaid, workers at Bank of America and Macy’s probably don’t come to mind.

And yet both companies employ people either enrolled themselves in the government health care program, or whose children are enrolled.

Walmart tops the list. As of May, 3,654 people in Connecticut who use Medicaid were themselves employed by Walmart or they were children of Walmart workers. That’s a 64 percent increase for the company since 2005.

It means the workers’ wages were low enough to qualify them or their dependents for the free health care program. It also means they either opted out of paying for health insurance offered to them through work, or the health insurance wasn’t offered. It could also mean the health insurance offered through work wasn’t worth the premium employees would have paid, or it was worth it but too pricey. (more…)