Wal-Mart pays its workers such low wages they qualify for government programs for the poor and near poor—which means Wal-Mart is using taxpayers to subsidize the costs of its employee health care coverage. In Georgia alone, more than 10,000 children of Wal-Mart employees were enrolled in the state’s public health insurance program for children, PeachCare, according to a 2002 state government examination. The number of Wal-Mart employees’ children enrolled in the program far exceeded the number of children of any other employer. Publix Super Markets had the next highest number, 734. Wal-Mart’s failure to cover these children cost federal and state taxpayers an estimated $6.6 million.

Working families and health care activists have developed a “Health Care Disclosure Act” for which they are seeking support in state legislatures. Read the AFL-CIO report, The Wal-Mart Tax: A Review of Studies Examining Employers’ Health Care Cost-Shifting, documenting the efforts by states that already have released disclosure reports.

Another 27 state legislatures have, or plan to introduce, disclosure legislation.

The Health Care Disclosure Act will enable states to determine which corporate freeloaders are shifting their responsibility to provide health care coverage for their employees onto state taxpayers. The bill requires the state to collect and disclose the names of the employers of applicants for publicly-funded health care programs or uncompensated care in a hospital, as well as the cost to state taxpayers.

See how much Wal-Mart is costing states in worker health care costs

Learn more about paying the price at Wal-Mart.