Kentucky Government Union (KEHP) Get More Perks

As if the above-market wages and benefits taxpayers of Kentucky pay for government workers aren't bad enough, now the approximate 275,000 members of Kentucky Employees' Health Plan (KEHP) will get even more perks, as they'll be able to participate in a program where they'll get an additional 5 percent savings off of healthy products such as vegetables and fruit, among other similar items when they shop at Wal-Mart (WMT).

While it's a good idea to remind and incentivize people to eat healthier, it is a questionable practice by Wal-Mart to offer this to government workers only who are already over-paid and underwritten by the people working in the private sector that are far more productive and beneficial to Kentucky.

HumanaVitality CEO Joe Woods, said this, "The Commonwealth has become a national leader in inspiring healthy behavior through its LivingWell program and now through Vitality HealthyFood. Helping people make healthier choices in their daily lives is how we're going to solve the healthcare cost crisis in this country. Unique collaborations such as this, among employers, health companies and retailers, are the key to making that happen."

This is a mistake by Wal-Mart in that they are favoring public employees to the neglect of the private sector, which actually provides terrific benefit to the people of Kentucky. Why didn't they roll this out as a benefit for all of the people rather than those in a public union? It makes little sense at all, and tarnishes them with favoritism against the regular customers of the retail giant.

The idea that the people with the least need for price cuts are the recipients of the benefits of them shows how far we've been removed from being able to rightly discern the needs of our communities and the people living in them.

Bad move Wal-Mart. Those working in the productive private sector should be those that receive better prices, not those that the private sector supports to the end that it has to bear the weight of wages and benefits of the type they will never receive, and which has unfunded liabilities in the billions for the state employees who aren't willing to pay their fair share of those benefits, but instead throw them on the rest of the people to prop them up.

Wal-Mart should have rolled out this program for all residents of Kentucky, not the overpaid government workers who need a pay and benefit cut so we no longer have to support their lavish lifestyles.