As the 800-pound gorilla of retailers, Wal-Mart made national headlines when it announced on Tuesday that it was cutting the health benefits for its 30,000 employees who work fewer than 30 hours a week.
A company blog post put the move down to rising healthcare costs, but the 30-hour cut-off gives a clue as to the real cause - President Barack Obama's healthcare reform.
Under the Affordable Care Act, large companies are required, starting this January, to provide subsidised healthcare for every employee who works 30-hours a week or more.
If a retail empire built on low prices can't find a way around ObamaCare's added costs, we are all doomed”EditorialInvestor's Business Daily
As the Atlantic's David A Graham notes, many of the law's critics said the result would be that large companies cut the hours worked by their employees to fewer than 30 a week. Instead what appears to be happening is that big retailers like Wal-Mart, Target, Home Depot and Walgreens are simply doing away with the health benefits of their part-time workers entirely.
The part-time Wal-Mart employees - only 2% of the company's 1.3 million-person workforce - aren't without recourse, however. They can now enrol in the state and national healthcare insurance exchanges and are likely to receive government subsidies to help pay their premiums.
Whether this is a good or a bad thing depends a great deal on one's view of Mr Obama's healthcare reform and the quality of the private plans offered through the exchanges.
The editors of the conservative Investor's Business Daily are quick to assign blame, observing that Wal-Mart also announced it was raising the amount its full-time employees pay for their healthcare packages by 19% (an additional $3.50 (£2.18) a pay period, which still keeps their rates lower than the national average for retail employees).
"If a retail empire built on low prices can't find a way around Obamacare's added costs, we are all doomed," they write.
The Wall Street Journal's editors, also a conservative lot, say Wal-Mart's decision to "jettison" its part-time workers onto the exchanges is a rational response to the healthcare law's incentives.
"With a subsidized government alternative now open for business, and since corporations aren't liable for a penalty for not covering people who work fewer than 30 hours a week on average, cost-control logic says to send such coverage ballast over the side," they write. "The only question now is how many and how fast other companies partake of the new all-you-can-eat entitlement buffet. Get whatever you like, the bill's on taxpayers."
