Big Florida Employers Shift Health Care Costs to Taxpayers—Fair Share’s One Answer

by Mike Hall, Jun 14, 2006

More than 3 million Floridians, including 1.8 million workers, have no health insurance—and according to a new report, more companies are “shifting the cost of health insurance for their workers to the state or other employers.”

One solution offered by the report, Health Care Coverage and Employment Status in Florida: Passage of state-level Fair Share Health Care legislation to stop the slide of employer-based health coverage.

In fact, grassroots union activists in more than 30 states, including Florida, are working for passage of Fair Share Health Care legislation, which in general requires large corporations to spend a certain percentage of their payroll to provide health care benefits for their employees or pay into a state Fair Share Health Care Fund. The percent of payroll employers would be either set by the state legislature or set based on the average percentage paid by large employers in the state.

In Florida, a coalition of unions, health care workers and health care advocacy groups held a press conference Tuesday outside the emergency room of Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami to highlight the state’s health crisis and the study by the Research Institute on Social and Economic Policy of the Center for Labor Research and Studies at Florida International University.

In a statement, the coalition, which includes the Florida AFL-CIO, affiliated unions and other unions said:

The report provides incontrovertible proof to the claims that labor unions and other worker advocacy groups have been saying for years that Florida’s shifting economy and the loss of good jobs are creating a serious healthcare crisis in our state, one that can no longer be ignored by our elected officials in Tallahassee and Washington.

Silvana Crissien is one of those Florida workers without health care. The 28-year-old bank teller who had heart surgery at 10 told reporters:

Basically, it just gets to a point where you have to decide whether you have to pay your bills or go to the doctor. My health should be a priority, but it takes a back burner because I have to pay my bills; I can’t go into the red.

Although 37.4 percent of workers in small businesses (fewer than 10 employees) have no health insurance, the report says:

Large employers still account for large numbers of uninsured, especially in the wholesale and retail trade and leisure and hospitality industries. Union membership also makes a dramatic difference in uninsurance rates for most industries.

While 22.6 percent of nonunion workers have no health coverage, only 8.1 percent of union workers lack health coverage in Florida, according to the report.

Fair Share Health Care laws that would ensure the largest corporations such as Wal-Mart stop shifting health care insurance costs to workers, taxpayers and other businesses. In March, the AFL-CIO released a report showing just how much Wal-Mart’s health care cost-shifting is costing states.

The AFL-CIO report, The Wal-Mart Tax: Shifting Health Care Costs to Taxpayers, offers a few examples of the financial burden companies such as Wal-Mart pass on to taxpayers:

In Arizona and Maine, roughly 10 percent of Wal-Mart’s workers get their health benefits from the state. In Washington state, it’s almost 20 percent. In New Jersey, Wal-Mart tops the list of employers pushing workers into state-provided health care programs although the retailer is only the state’s eighth largest employer.

The company rakes in profits at the rate of more than $21,000 per minute; its 2005 profits were $11.2 billion. The 2005 compensation package for Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott was more than $17.5 million. Five members of the Walton family—all are major company stockholders—have a combined net worth exceeding $90 billion, putting all five on the list of the 10 wealthiest Americans. On top of its health care subsidies, Wal-Mart has wrung at least $1 billion in economic development assistance from state and local governments over the past 20 years.

It’s clear such corporations must be held accountable. As the Florida report notes, Fair Share Health Care would ensure large companies “set the standard,” enabling small employers to find it easier to provide coverage for their employees and remain competitive against larger firms. In addition, corporations likely to short-shrift their employees’ health care are those in the service industry and not subject to outsourcing.

The Florida report says:

The arguments against Fair Share legislation, that it would negatively impact job creation and retention, do not bear out from the evidence in this report. Almost 87 percent of the employers leaving their employees to use the government’s Medicaid program are in the retail and wholesale trade, services, or construction industries. Unlike manufacturing, for example, firms in these industries are geographically bound to where there is demand for retail goods, services, and buildings. With its rapidly growing population and its service- retail- and construction-oriented economy, Florida faces no danger of job loss to other states in these sectors from a government requirement that very large employers provide health insurance coverage or a payment into a government fund to provide health care.

For look at recent health care action in other states, click here, here and here.

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