Walmart...

There's a lot of things to dislike about Walmart, but this story doesn't seem to me to be one of them.

In any health insurance situation, if you get into an accident, and your health insurance pays, say, $50,000 of your medical bills, and you later sue the person at fault and win $75,000 from his auto insurer, your health insurer gets to be reimbursed the $50,000 they paid. To do otherwise means that the victim is paid twice for the same accident, and both health and liability insurance costs, for everybody, goes up. That seems pretty fair to me.

Of course the accident sucks. Of course it sucks that this woman is permanently disabled (for which long-term disability insurance would be helpful, and I believe Walmart provides that coverage, though it is not mentioned at all in the article). Of course I wish this woman didn't need to suffer. And of course, Walmart would be heroic if they didn't demand the money back. But I don't think it's evil for Walmart to expect it back and the family made things worse for themselves by trying to fight it and having to pay Walmart's court costs.

So, I guess I just don't get this latest flap against Walmart.

Update: Looks like Walmart doesn't like the bad press. They changed their mind. http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/law/04/02/walmart.decision/index.html?iref=mpstoryview