Walmart To Raise Premiums On Smokers and Cut Healthcare On Part-Time Workers

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If you’re a smoker, you might want to save a little dough by kicking the habit if you’re working full-time for Wal-Mart or plan to apply for part-time work in the future.

If you’re just hearing the news, it has been revealed that Wal-Mart is planning to cut health care benefits for future part-time workers and will be raising the premium on full-time workers who are users of tobacco.

The reasoning is stated to be due to the rising cost of health care and therefore, Walmart will be eliminating coverage for part-time workers who are employed in the future that work less than 24 hours per week.

Wal-Mart will not be the first to raise the cost of premiums on full-time workers who use tobacco. Companies such as Northwest Airlines, PepsiCo Inc. and others increased their premiums on smokers years ago.

Companies such as Weyco Inc in Okemos, MI gained attention for giving their employees ultimatums to either quit tobacco use or be fired. Kimball Physics in Wilton, NH had banned the use of tobacco at its facilities and banned anyone from entering it if tobacco had been used in the past two hours.

As for Wal-Mart employees who use tobacco, it is being warned that cost of increases on premiums may be up to as much as 40 percent and the amount Wal-Mart will be contributing will be cut in half.

Many employers who have implemented such tobacco bans and rules hope that raising premiums on tobacco users will divert them to stop, thus in turn lowering healthcare cost for other workers and the employer. Tobacco users cost companies an average of 25 percent more than non-smokers.

Did You Know?
Cigarettes contain more than 4,000 chemicals, 43 known cancer-causing compounds and 400 other toxins which include nicotine, carbon monoxide, tar, formaldehyde, ammonia (to help absorb more nicotine), hydrogen cyanide, arsenic, and DDT.

A list of 599 cigarette addictives was submitted to the Dept. of Health and Human Service by five major American cigarette companies and no one knows how many of these additives are actually in cigarettes since cigarettes do not contain a list of ingredients.

2 COMMENTS

  1. They need to do something about these smokers. I don’t need any health problems not caused by me due to second hand smoke. Smokers don’t realize how the stench smell and the ordor it leaves in their clothes. I’m more disgusted with the parents who smoke right with their child around. I hope they do pass that ban on people who smoke with children in the car like Texas did. Who wants to inhale ammonia, formaldehyde or carbon monoxide?

    You might as well sit in a garage with the door closed and turn on your car.

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