To be fair, the requirement to provide health insurance and other benefits for full-time workers is definitely one of the leading causes of the reduction in full-time jobs. If lawmakers were really putting the peoples’ interests first, they would have just said that for a part-time job the employer would have to provide benefits based on the fraction of 40 hours the employee worked (e.g. 20 hours is half-benefits).
Look I’ll be honest with you. As someone outside the US the idea that your workplace is responsible for your private insurance / healthcare is bug fuck insane and open to exploitation on a mind boggling scale.
Not just open to exploitation; openly exploited. Disruption to coverage and questions about what could be covered differently are significant factors that cause people to choose not to take a job elsewhere.
The trick is that health insurance can be bought directly, but it’s just so insanely expensive to do it that way so nobody does. Companies get a huge discount to buy bulk enterprise packages, and then their employees pay for a lot of it themselves. The portion that the company pays for is just an expense of labor, the same as salary, and offering better than the company across the street is an incentive to get better hires.
The ACA basically was just “hey, you know that discount that companies are getting? Now do it for the state and we’ll offer it to everybody. And insurance companies will like it because people are given incentive to buy this because we’re gonna fine people for not being insured.” Pretty shitty deal, but at least people had the freedom to jobhop or become unemployed and keep their doctors.
It’s cheaper and easier to buy a gun than to get an abortion in this shithole country.
Look at it like this: in America, a sizeable portion of people think that your direct economic utility is a good measure of if you deserve to live. They’ll justify it by saying things like “they don’t think it’s governments place” to provide social services, and that it’s better handled through charity.
If you don’t have a workplace you need to go for real American style socialized medicine: GoFundMe.
(The history behind it is that before anyone was really doing socialized healthcare workplaces in the US started offering health insurance as a way to increase compensation during the WW2 wage freezes. Eventually it was so pervasive that it was a recognized form of compensation, and then it was the easiest way to dictate that everyone had insurance, since a lot of people listened to the fear mongering that was going on. “Nothing changes you just can’t get kicked off for developing cancer”. It also lined up with the beliefs of those who think that people who aren’t working don’t deserve support)
lawmakers were really putting the peoples’ interests first, they would have just said that for a part-time job the employer would have to provide benefits based on the fraction of 40 hours the employee worked (e.g. 20 hours is half-benefits).
Then shitty jobs would only give people up to 10 hours per week so they’d have to work 4 jobs to get close to 40 hours, and of course that quarter benefits wouldn’t cover jack shit. Quarter benefits and people working 4 jobs would also make it a 75% chance that any employee you hire and schedule at ~10 hours per week doesn’t accept the benefits thereby saving the business money
Better solution would be single payer healthcare, i.e. Medicare for all, plus expanding social security to pay more than a starvation amount would also be ideal. I’ve also previously outlined the thoughts of expanding SNAP/Foodstamps to all, housing assistance vouchers to all and Social Security to all to effectively reach UBI based entirely off of existing programs that tens of millions of Americans are already on right now. Work becomes how you fund hobbies and a better lifestyle and economic downturns don’t hurt normal people as much
To be fair, the requirement to provide health insurance and other benefits for full-time workers is definitely one of the leading causes of the reduction in full-time jobs. If lawmakers were really putting the peoples’ interests first, they would have just said that for a part-time job the employer would have to provide benefits based on the fraction of 40 hours the employee worked (e.g. 20 hours is half-benefits).
Look I’ll be honest with you. As someone outside the US the idea that your workplace is responsible for your private insurance / healthcare is bug fuck insane and open to exploitation on a mind boggling scale.
Not just open to exploitation; openly exploited. Disruption to coverage and questions about what could be covered differently are significant factors that cause people to choose not to take a job elsewhere.
The trick is that health insurance can be bought directly, but it’s just so insanely expensive to do it that way so nobody does. Companies get a huge discount to buy bulk enterprise packages, and then their employees pay for a lot of it themselves. The portion that the company pays for is just an expense of labor, the same as salary, and offering better than the company across the street is an incentive to get better hires.
The ACA basically was just “hey, you know that discount that companies are getting? Now do it for the state and we’ll offer it to everybody. And insurance companies will like it because people are given incentive to buy this because we’re gonna fine people for not being insured.” Pretty shitty deal, but at least people had the freedom to jobhop or become unemployed and keep their doctors.
It’s cheaper and easier to buy a gun than to get an abortion in this shithole country.
Classic US capitalism: Take a product, triple the price, and then offer a generous 50% discount if you sign up on unfavourable terms.
But yeah, I guess I am preaching to the choir here.
Look at it like this: in America, a sizeable portion of people think that your direct economic utility is a good measure of if you deserve to live. They’ll justify it by saying things like “they don’t think it’s governments place” to provide social services, and that it’s better handled through charity.
If you don’t have a workplace you need to go for real American style socialized medicine: GoFundMe.
(The history behind it is that before anyone was really doing socialized healthcare workplaces in the US started offering health insurance as a way to increase compensation during the WW2 wage freezes. Eventually it was so pervasive that it was a recognized form of compensation, and then it was the easiest way to dictate that everyone had insurance, since a lot of people listened to the fear mongering that was going on. “Nothing changes you just can’t get kicked off for developing cancer”. It also lined up with the beliefs of those who think that people who aren’t working don’t deserve support)
If lawmakers were really putting the peoples’ interests first, they’d pass socialized medicine
Then shitty jobs would only give people up to 10 hours per week so they’d have to work 4 jobs to get close to 40 hours, and of course that quarter benefits wouldn’t cover jack shit. Quarter benefits and people working 4 jobs would also make it a 75% chance that any employee you hire and schedule at ~10 hours per week doesn’t accept the benefits thereby saving the business money
Better solution would be single payer healthcare, i.e. Medicare for all, plus expanding social security to pay more than a starvation amount would also be ideal. I’ve also previously outlined the thoughts of expanding SNAP/Foodstamps to all, housing assistance vouchers to all and Social Security to all to effectively reach UBI based entirely off of existing programs that tens of millions of Americans are already on right now. Work becomes how you fund hobbies and a better lifestyle and economic downturns don’t hurt normal people as much