Wal-Mart has announced that the percentage of associates who now have health insurance for 2008 has significantly increased from 90.4% to 92.7%, and the number of uninsured associates decreased by more than 20 percent compared to a year ago.

With some policies costing just a few dollars per paycheck, this could be an economical way for parents to put their children on private insurance that offers much better access to physicians than the public coverage of standard SCHIP and Medicaid.

Wal-Mart, by the way, says that 1.9% if its associates are on Medicaid and 1.2% of them are on state programs other than Medicaid, predominately SCHIP. They would be good candidates for these premium assistance programs.