Wal-Mart is quite adept at the mirage game: create an illusion to mask reality. Once it was the image of Sam Walton, the aw-shucks small town guy–who was actually quite a brutal businessman who had no compunction about destroying local businesses. Then, came the “Buy America” company that could not survive without slave wage labor in China.

Today, we see the next salvo: pretend like you care about workers when you don’t do much. According to The New York Times, Wal-Mart apparently will now allow their part-time workers to enroll their children in the company’s health insurance plan. It also apparently is going to make it slightly easier for part-timers to get into the health plan in a shorter period of time–though it isn’t saying how much more quickly.

To its credit, the Times story raises two important points:

Even with the expanded plan, Wal-Mart’s workers, whose average pay is less than $20,000 a year, will still pay monthly premiums and hefty annual deductibles.

And…

Wal-Mart declined to say how much the changes would cost, a number that investors will be eager to learn, given Wal-Mart’s no-frills business model, which emphasizes low labor costs. Ms. Williams said the plan was factored into Wal-Mart’s profit forecast for 2006, which the company announced this week.

Without such details, it is unclear whether the latest changes will move Wal-Mart employees off state Medicaid rolls and onto Wal-Mart’s insurance plans, a change state legislators have pushed for with their proposed legislation. It is also unclear if these changes will increase the percentage of Wal-Mart’s payroll devoted to health care, another focus of the proposed state laws.

News of the changes drew carefully parsed praise from leaders of health care groups like the Center for Studying Health System Change, a nonpartisan foundation in Washington. Paul B. Ginsburg, the center’s president, credited Wal-Mart for trying to expand health care offerings at a time when many employers are pulling back on spending.

But he added that Wal-Mart was “clearly focused on what it can do to look better without it costing them a lot more money.”

I added the emphasis. The fact is that Wal-Mart is trying to perserve its business model: low prices brought to you with low-wage and no benefits. Until it is forced to change its business model, it will continue to try to make cosmetic changes that make very little difference to the workers and communities who are suffering from its business model.

As far as the Wal-Mart story goes, the point that is relevant to me, which the Times would never bring up, is the staggering wealth of the Waltons. When is enough money considered to be enough for a lifetime? The five members of the Walton family ring in at about $80 billion (it may have done up or down since I last checked, depending on the stock price). They could pick up the cost of the health plan for workers–never mind raise wages–and, oh, it might cost a few billion. Would that cost mean a missed meal for any of the Waltons?

The bigger point, though, is that the only solution to the health care crisis facing Wal-Mart workers is enacting Medicare For All for every person in the country. Employer-based health insurance is a failure and it is draining our economy, and our own personal wallets. Until we take on the leeches of the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries, we will never get the health insurance that every person should have in the richest nation on earth.