Do you know what's in your health plan?

Subject: Do you know what's in your health plan?

The gist:

While a Wal-Mart employee, Mrs. Debbie Shank got hit by a truck a few years ago. As a result she has permanent brain damage, loss of much of her short-term memory, and is wheelchair bound. In the settlement from the accident, after legal fees etc, she got $417,000. But since Wal-Mart had spent $470,000 on her medical bills, they sued her for the latter amount! And won! It turns out the health plan Mrs. Shank signed on for legally lets the company do exactly that.

It's bad enough that close to 50 million people in the US have no health insurance, but look at what kind of barbaric bureaucracy people who do are sometimes the victims of. (Btw, CNN's employees allegedly have this same kind of clause as Wal-Mart in their health plans. Do you?)
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/03/25/walmart.insurance.battle/index.html


The inimitable Keith Olbermann said it best last night:

"Now, contrary to general opinion, Wal-Mart is not owned by the Devil...but you know why people think of Wal-Mart and evil in the same sentence? Because of the crap you guys do, like this. Instead of letting this one go and maybe even putting out a press release saying, 'We take care of our own', maybe you get $470,000 worth of good publicity. No. Now you get this. Wal-Mart's profit last year was over $11 billion dollars, including $470,000 it got back from Mrs. Shank. Who is, between the truck that hit her and what you amoral Wal-Mart trolls did to her, she is so confused that she doesn't really understand that 6 days after you beat her in court, her 18 year-old son was killed fighting for this country in Iraq. Wal-Mart: may your stores melt in the hot sun." (Emphasis mine.)

Shame on the Supreme Court, btw, for refusing to hear her case.


Meanwhile, on the Huffington Post:

"Hillary Clinton was on the Board of Directors of Wal-Mart for 6 years. Wal-Mart paid her $18,000 each year she was on the board and $1,500 for every meeting she attended. She accumulated at least $100,000 in Wal-Mart stock. This might be the reason she refuses to release her tax records even though Barack Obama has done so. Maybe it's time we demand that she give back this blood money? Moreover, when Hillary Clinton was with the Rose Law firm in Little Rock she defended Wal-Mart against workers who tried to organize unions making the firm, in the words of labor leader Jonathan Tassini, 'one of the most active anti-union law firms in the country.'"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-a-palermo/hillary-clinton-and-walm_b_93638.html