Eevil Wal-Mart and Healthcare

Wal-Mart is sinking its eevil corporate fangs into health care, and nobody is doing anything to stop it.

But don’t worry, someone will notice pretty soon.

Wal-Mart is hated by every liberal because Wal-Mart moves heaven and earth to prevent the unionization of its employees. You can understand Wal-Mart’s position on this. Why would they want to turn their associates into surly unionized auto workers or even surly unionzied DMV workers. Or totally ineffective unionized education workers.

And did you know that Wal-Mart has a waiting period for part-time employees before it offers them health insurance? It’s an outrage!

Now Wal-Mart is moving into health care. It is gradually expanding its generic drugs program, offering a three-month’s supply of most generic drugs for $10, according to financial columnist Jim Jubak.

But the big move by Wal-Mart is its in-store health clinics where the standard charge is $45 per visit, cash or credit, but no insurance.

In other words, Wal-Mart is applying its Always Low Prices, Always business model into health care. And they are moving into electronic health records too, so that your records will follow you around from Wal-Mart to Wal-Mart.

The big payoff is that all the other players are sitting up and taking notice.

The best thing about letting Wal-Mart do it is that the company won’t have to fix the health care system all by itself. Wal-Mart’s entry into this field has already galvanized competition from retailers such as Target... and CVS Caremark...



Some, like Target, are matching Wal-Mart step by step. Some are arguably ahead of the giant retailer. Clinic operator MinuteClinic is a CVS subsidiary that operates more clinics than Wal-Mart has opened to date.

Meanwhile the politicians are offering more subsidy (McCain) or compulsion (Obama and Clinton). As we know, subsidy and compulsion have been a great success in education, health care, welfare and everything else in which the government is involved.

You can be sure that Wal-Mart will get the blame for this eevil corporate scheme. Whatever it is that they have done, and nobody is yet sure what it is.

Meanshile we can all enjoy it as the bloated health-care industry starts to squirm.