Part time workers at Target got a rude awakening today. Their health care coverage that was covered by the company is being dropped. Why? Because of ObamaCARE. Target sets off what will be many other companies this year to drop coverage to the employees because of ObamaCARE’s mandate which for businesses start next year. Part-time Target employees have until April 1st to find health care coverage, as that’s the day Target is dropping part-time coverage. This isn’t some sick April Fools joke either.
At Target, we have a longstanding commitment to our team members’ health and well-being. We have been researching and evaluating how the transforming health care landscape will impact our team members and our company. Along the way, we have been firmly committed to making the best decisions for our team members and Target.
The launch of Health Insurance Marketplaces provides new options for health care coverage that we believe our part-time team members may prefer. In fact, by offering them insurance, we could actually disqualify many of them from being eligible for newly available subsidies that could reduce their overall health insurance expense.
In addition, the majority of our part-time team members who have been eligible for our health insurance coverage don’t enroll. Today, less than 10 percent of our total team member population participates in our part-time plan.
As a result, and after much thoughtful consideration, we have decided to discontinue part-time health insurance coverage for our stores’ part-time team members, beginning April 1, 2014.
We sat down with Jodee Kozlak, executive vice president of Human Resources at Target, to talk about the part-time team member health benefit changes and what we are doing to support our team members.