Target Healthcare (Business)

"Target to drop health policies for part-timers"

By:  Ricardo Lopez and Tiffany Hsu

Source: LA Times

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-target-health-insurance-20140123,0,6459410.story#axzz2vQiBolSH

Target Corporation became the recent company to stop providing healthcare to part-time workers. Experts say that Target will now be the last major company to stop providing healthcare. Target announced that they are changing their benefits policy starting on the first of April. The reason of doing this is because the part-time employees could receive cheaper and better coverage through Obamacare. Although this is happening, only a small percentage of part-time workers would be affected. Of the total workforce, only 361,000 are enrolled in part-time decisions. Target is on the list with other restaurants and retailers that are making changes to health benefits throughout Obamacare. In September, Home Depot said that they would discard healthcare in January which would only affect five percent of the workforce. 160,000 employees switched to employer-sponsored coverage with private healthcare at Walgreens. Experts in this field say that employers with large numbers of part-time workers will agree on keeping costs low. Target mentioned how this decision may actually benefit the part-time workers if they look for insurance on their own. Target is providing the part-time workers with $500 in cash to help with the transition. Target has also hired a firm to help people with those transitions. Trader Joe’s also stated in September that its part-time workers would also benefit from this if they looked for health insurance with public exchanges, but Trader Joe’s said that more than 77 percent of its employees would be unaffected. Businesses are asking workers to participate more with their health insurance and possibly accept less benefits. Last year, a quarter of California firms said that they either increased the costs for employees or decreased health benefits. Health insurance seems like a problem in the U.S and needs to be resolved somehow.