Meet Washington’s #1 Medicaid giant: Amazon
Plus Ferguson stacks campaign cash, the ferry hikes cometh and some recommended reading
More workers are tapping Medicaid for health care at Amazon than at any other employer in Washington, even as the the e-commerce giant wows Wall Street investors.1
The news comes from the state Health Care Authority’s latest figures, which crowned Amazon as Washington’s largest cost driver for Medicaid, the state/federal program that pays for care for low-income people, ahead of even Walmart and McDonald’s. Some 8,000 Amazon workers cost the state $19 million in Medicaid dollars per biennium and another $41M in federal dollars.2
It’s safe to say that these are the folks on the bottom rung at Amazon–people sorting packages or driving a delivery van–rather than the computer nerds raking in six figures a year. Given Washington’s high minimum wage, a single person working full time at Amazon is making more than the $1,800 maximum monthly income that’ll get you on Apple Health, so we’re talking workers with dependent children, for whom the limit can be more than $5,500 per month.
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