Governor Romney (who has national ambitions so this is somewhat relevant for US policy) has put forth a "plan" to insure more state residents. Part of his plan is a toothless "shaming" of employers who have employees on Medicaid or in the state-funded hospital "free care" program (its toothless in the sense that health insurance is generally much more expensive than shame).
Anyway, this data does give an interesting picture. I estimate* that 3,805 employees of Dunkin Donuts (see Carl, they are about more than ugly signs) get state-funded health care. BTW, Dunkin Donusts has gotten into trouble here for hiring under age workers (sweatshop activists take note--14 and 15 year olds mostly) . Walmart, if you must know, has 2,218 employees who get state health care (I don't think there are even 20 WalMarts in Massachusetts though).
To me the most interesting part to learn was that well over 3,000 hospital and chain nursing facilities workers were on the state plan instead of their employers. This includes about 1600(!) Boston Medical Center and 600(!) Massachetts General Hospital workers (MGH's parent made $28.9 Million in "excess operating revenue" in the last quarter mostly through "not-for-profit" institutions).
Also, MGH's parent has recently hired Dem big-wig John Sasso (who was Dukakis's campaign manager and prominent in recent DNC dealings) for $2 million to boost the rates the hospitals get from Medicaid. It is all about priorities.
Jim
*My estimates are based on administrative data in the Medicaid system (which are pretty complete but reflect only the employer at sign-up and is generally not updated) and a Health Care Fin and Policy collection of data from the state free care pool. Employer information here is generally not very complete and I used a very conservative method to complete this data. Other published accounts of this data just use the incomplete data which is by definition inaccurate.