According to court records, several employees at Pacur (previously named Rexam Extrusions) have had their wages garnished by Oshkosh area health care providers to pay medical bills.
Some examples: One emplyoyee was sued for $3,542 by Appleton Medical Center in 2008, while another was sued by Mercy Medical Center for $2,591 back in 2002.
Johnson has repeatedly said that he has a health care plan at Pacur where employees are offered a health savings account, pay their own medical bills out of the account, and get to keep any of the money left over. The hope of such systems is that employees will bargain with health care providers, which will in-theory bring down the cost of health care. The practical effect of such systems, however, is that employees that are stuggling to get-by will spend the money in the health savings account on expenses unrelated to health care-- as is clearly the case at Pacur.
This is important, of course, because Johnson is proposing scrapping the recently passed health care bill and replacing it with a system based largely on HSAs-- even though he knows that it hasn't worked at Pacur.