Walmart Public Relation Blitz or Smoke and Mirrors on Healt care Coverage

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The plans with the lowest premiums would still charge annual deductibles as high as $2,000 — typical for American corporate health plans, but perhaps steep for Wal-Mart employees, many of whom work part time and earn less than $20,000 a year. And the company’s plans have other limitations, including waiting periods as long as a year for new employees.

Wal-Mart Watch, a group long critical of the company, said yesterday that “these plans are still unaffordable due to low wages or inaccessible due to waiting periods.”

It is unclear how many of the 125,000 Wal-Mart workers without health coverage would sign up. But industry analysts said the program represented an upgrade for the 636,000 employees who already receive health insurance through Wal-Mart. They said it could force the company’s discount-retailing competitors to offer more generous plans for their own workers.

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When will Americans get what every other industrialized nation in the world already gets?

Remember the Kitten Killer, Frist? Why health care costs are out of control in the US

Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) is the largest private operator of health care facilities in the world. It is based in Nashville, Tennessee, United States and is widely considered to be the single largest factor in making that city a hotspot for healthcare enterprise.

The founders included two members of the Frist family, which became very wealthy as a result. The former majority leader of the U.S. Senate, Bill Frist is a member of the family and has a substantial stake in the company. Most of his $20 million (or more) personal fortune was made through his holdings in HCA. Jack O. Bovender, Jr., is the Chief Executive Officer of HCA.

During the 1970s-1980s the corporation went through a tremendous growth period acquiring hundreds of hospitals across the United States which numbered 255 owned and 208 which HCA managed.

In the late-1990s, after a merger with Louisville-based Columbia Hospital Corporation which formed Columbia/HCA, the company was investigated by the government for Medicare and Medicaid fraud and paid a settlement of $1.7 billion, the largest fraud settlement in US history at the time. Then-CEO Rick Scott resigned but no criminal prosecutions resulted.

The name subsequently reverted to "Hospital Corporation of America." HCA abandoned the use of its name in its home market and instead promotes its Nashville hospitals under the TriStar brand.

On June 13, 2005, Senator Frist reportedly instructed the trustee managing his HCA shares to sell all of his stock. The sale took place in July, two weeks before disappointing earnings sent the stock on a 15-point plunge. In November 2006 HCA was acquired by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Bain Capital and Merrill Lynch Global Private Equity in what was, at the time, the largest leveraged buyout (LBO) in history, adjusted for inflation.