It’s not just purchasers of health coverage on the AffordableCare Act exchanges who need to worry about whether their benefitswill disappear or whether the price will balloon beyond theirability to pay. New Walmart employees—at online retailers theretail giant has acquired—are watching their employer-sponsoredhealth coverage disappear.

The New York Times reports that in a little over a year, Walmarthas sunk close to $4 billion into the acquisition of e-commercecompanies that collectively employ thousands of workers. And asthose acquisitions came under the Walmart umbrella, many of thoseworkers are finding that their health care coverage is no longereven remotely affordable.

Walmart has long been criticized for skimping on its employees’ health care benefits, with manyWalmart workers actually relying on Medicaid in the absence ofemployer-sponsored coverage within their reach. And while it didmake coverage both more accessible and more affordable for a briefperiod about 10 years ago, that trend is now reversing itself.

In 2011, for instance, the company boosted some premiums by morethan 40 percent, according to the NYT report. Three years ago, ittightened the eligibility requirements for obtaining coverage,shutting out workers putting in less than 30 hours a week. Andwhile other retailers such as Target and Home Depot may have madesimilar changes, that doesn’t make it any easier on workers to knowthat they’re not alone.

Retail in general is a tough industry in which to get healthcoverage—and even when it’s available, the report says, workerssign up in low numbers, “possibly suggesting that the insurance isnot very attractive or affordable even when companies do offerit.”

But that hasn’t been true for a number of e-commercecompanies—at least, not until they were acquired by Walmart. Forinstance, online men’s retailer Bonobo offered its workers healthcoverage with no premium, as long as they chose a deductible of$2,000 for an individual or $4,000 for a family. Walmart bought thecompany in June and now employees will have to fork over $750 inpremiums (for an individual) or $4,000 (for a family) for acomparable plan. The kicker? The deductibles now, in both cases,will run 50 percent more than under Bonobo’s management.

Then there’s women’s online retailer ModCloth, whose workers nowmust pay deductibles of several thousand dollars per year to keeppremium levels relatively close to what they paid under ModCloth.Previously they had no deductibles.

Economists are concerned that Walmart’s policies in the wake ofits acquisition spree will exert downward pressure on healthbenefits throughout the e-commerce sector. And Jared Bernstein, asenior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, isquoted in the report saying, “My concern is that they bring theirmodel with them regardless of what was going on before they gotthere.”

Blake Jackson, a Walmart spokesman, is quoted saying in thereport, “We’ve put a lot of thought into creating a total package,including both compensation and benefits, that offers more thanwhat we’ve had in the past.”

But perhaps not as much as what acquired employees had in thepast.