WMT vs Healthcare, as the New York Times reports

The Times' Michael Barbaro highlights the struggle Wal-Mart has had providing their employees with Health Care. Turns out the company has been listening to its critics here is an excerpt from the article

The giant, it turns out, was listening. All the criticism was hurting its reputation and its ability to expand. So now, after spending two years seeking advice from everyone from Bill Clinton to executives at Starbucks, Wal-Mart is overhauling its health plans.

The company, according to data available for the first time, is offering better coverage to a greater number of workers. Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer, provides insurance to 100,000 more workers than it did just three years ago — and it is now easier for many to sign up for health care at Wal-Mart than at its rival, Target, whose reputation glows in comparison.

Wal-Mart has hardly become a standard-bearer for corporate America: it still insures fewer than half its 1.4 million employees in the United States.

But the changes in its policies have accomplished what once seemed impossible. Many of its most ardent critics have put down their pitchforks. Andrew L. Stern, whose Service Employees International Union set up an advocacy group to attack Wal-Mart three years ago, now concedes that “there is clearly a focus on covering more people.”

Read the entire article here