Half of Wal-Mart workers on company health plans

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which has about half of its stores in rural areas, responded to critics and rolled out more health insurance plans for its employees last year, including options with low deductibles and a $4 co-pay on generic prescription drugs. Since then, many of the company's workers have taken advantage of the new plans, but half still get insurance elsewhere or not at all, reports Ann Zimmerman of the Wall Street Journal.

"The world's biggest retailer by sales said 690,970 employees, or 50 percent of its almost 1.4 million staff, signed up for company-furnished health insurance during its open-enrollment period late last year, up from 47 percent a year earlier," Zimmerman writes. "The remaining employees are covered by either family members' plans or government-provided health care or forgo insurance altogether. During the past year, the percentage of Wal-Mart employees reporting that they had no coverage from any source fell to 7.3 percent from 9.6 percent."

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 15 percent of the nation's full-time workers have no health insurance. (Read more)