Health Insurance Plan Would Aid Part-Timers

Big Employers Seek Group Coverage

About 50 of the nation's largest employers, including McDonald's, IBM, Sears, Marriott and Lockheed Martin, have joined forces to negotiate health insurance coverage for an estimated 4 million uninsured workers and their dependents.

The employers won't pay for this coverage. Rather, they announced plans yesterday to form a purchasing pool of their part-time and contracted workers who do not qualify for health benefits. The employers will hire a single health insurer to offer various levels of coverage at rates lower than what the workers could get as individuals.

Details of costs and implementation are sketchy.

Uninsured workers could pay as little as $30 a year for a membership card that offers access to group insurance rates or as much as $2,000 a year for a plan that guarantees more comprehensive coverage, regardless of any preexisting condition, according to coalition members.

"Thirty dollars a year will not give you real insurance," said Greg A. Lee, the senior vice president for human resources at Sears, Roebuck & Co. "But that might be good enough for, you know, a 20-year-old kid who doesn't have access to health insurance at all. On the other hand, someone [with a family] is probably going to want some higher levels of coverage and would probably be willing to pay a little bit more."

About 44 million Americans are uninsured, 35 million of whom come from working families, according to the HR Policy Association, a lobbying group for human resources executives that created the coalition.

Some in the health benefits industry say political pressure nudged major employers to take some kind of action.

"The number -- of 44 million uninsured people -- is staggering," said Mark F. Lindsay, a vice president of health insurer UnitedHealth Group. "We're in an election year and it is very, very clear that health care is going to be a major issue on the agenda."

"Part of this is a response to bad publicity," said Laura Clay Trueman, executive director of the Coalition for Affordable Health Coverage, a consumer lobbying group whose members include health insurers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, the American Medical Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

She mentioned media reports focusing on questions about Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s health benefits. Part-time Wal-Mart employees are not eligible for health coverage for two years.

"When you've got Wal-Mart getting hit or others getting hit, [employers] want to show that they want to develop some opportunities for these people to get coverage," she said. "Because, you know, we all believe that Americans should have coverage. . . . So [employers] feel a pressure to put their collective minds to bat."

Wal-Mart isn't part of the coalition. A Wal-Mart spokeswoman said she was unaware of yesterday's announcement and was unable to say whether the company considered joining.

Encouraging part-time and contract workers to buy health coverage will increase productivity and decrease absenteeism, members of the coalition said.

Insured workers "have a tendency to be a little bit more comfortable in going to a doctor or to an emergency room . . . because they know they have coverage," said J. Randall MacDonald, IBM's senior vice president of human resources. "My guess is that some [uninsured] people bypass that. They're not going to spend the money. They're going to roll the dice."

Lee, the Sears vice president, said: "Healthy people are on the job more frequently." Sears has about 100,000 uninsured part-time workers at its 2,200 stores across the United States, he said.

Sears doesn't offer health benefits to its part-timers because of the cost, Lee said. "It's as simple as that. I mean, we made the decision a long time ago that it was just virtually unaffordable for us to cover our part-time employees," he said. "So this is a fabulous opportunity from our perspective to do some good" for part-time workers.

Executives from three insurers -- Aetna Inc., Cigna Corp. and UnitedHealth Group Inc. -- yesterday signaled their intentions to bid for this business. Part of their job will be to navigate through state rules that govern how coverage can be offered.

Lee said that if only 10 percent of the coalition's 4 million uninsured workers and dependents sign up for coverage the first year, "that's 400,000 people -- a good chunk of business" for a health insurer. "And as employees start talking about this, you would envision that number growing."