Wal-Mart 1, Maryland 0

A federal judge has rejected a Maryland law design to force large employers to pay a greater share of their employees’ health care costs. The main offender here is of course Wal-Mart. Many states have complained that the retail giant makes its healthcare plan too expensive for employees, forcing them onto state Medicaid rolls. In some instances, Wal-Mart stores encouraged their workers to get state-funded healthcare.

So basically, Wal-Mart et al are allowed to subsidize their bottom line by not providing decent benefits to employees and laying those costs off on the states. Corporate responsibility at its finest and reason number 621 to hate Wal-fucking-Mart. On the flipside, this kind of behavior may indeed back the nation into some sort of single-payer system that we desperately need anyway.