Wal-mart, the largest private employer in the United States, recently announced that they will be cutting back the coverage for part-time employees while raising premiums for full-time workers. In depth, all future employees who work less than 24 hours a week on average will not meet the qualifications that they need to be covered in any single one of the company’s health insurance plans. Furthermore, employees who work on average 24 to 33 hours a week normally would be able to include a spouse as part of their health care plan, but this will no longer be the case. For employees working these many hours a week, only their children will be covered. Greg Rossiter, a Wal-mart spokesman explained that these changes on their health care offerings were mainly due to rising costs.

The main ethical issue in this case is the lack of consideration towards employees. Not only will they have to work more hours to be covered, they also will have to face the burden of increasing premiums and deductibles which sometimes exceed 20 percent of their annual pay. These changes will undoubtedly have a huge impact on the vast number of senior employees working there.

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