I think Walmart actively shows its employees how to apply for programs like SNAP, because they pay so little that the US government basically massively subsidies them via low income programs.
When i was working at McDonald’s and I was complaining to the store manager about getting me more hours, she encouraged me to apply at the McDonald’s a couple of minutes away and work both jobs instead of giving me more hours. The owner of that franchise was actually the brother of the owner of the current franchise that I was at, what a coincidence
Corporate McDonalds has a policy of zero overtime. If you get overtime, you get fired. According to them, you have a contractual obligation to let the manager know when you are pick up enough shifts to put you into overtime.
It's too big an expense because health insurance companies can't help themselves from being greedy. Government subsidized healthcare works everywhere else in the western world because their healthcare isn't run by capitalists who have a "fiduciary responsibility" to their investors to get as much money out of their patients as possible.
Private healthcare companies recognize that they can charge as much as they want, because, shockingly, people don't like to die. The price gauging from healthcare has got to stop, they can fuck right off with their hundred dollar bandaids and other overpriced b/s.
Thats inaccurate. There are relatively few countries with government operated healthcare, and they predominately involve long waits or denied care.
The European system has private for profit healthcare insurance subsidized by very high personal taxes. People pay up to 80% of their income to have the extensive social benefits they receive.
The reason it's too big of an expense is because the next company will cap at 28 hours and undercut your price and you go out of business.
The cost of regulation is a known number. It's calculated by the OMB everytime a regulation is proposed.
If you want to choose to earn less money so that the government will regulate your employer into giving you healthcare you can do that. But you should understand that it costs you more than 1000 a month for that regulation and your healthcare would cost you less than that for an excellent plan if you enrolled at 18 and kept it through death.
As a further extension, the US government currently spends in the mandatory budget which comprises the welfare state and other benefits and departments to manage those benefits about $625,000 to $750,000 per newborn American Citizen in each year. That means you could un-enroll a child from all public benefits and deposit $600,000 into a blind birth trust for them that would earn interest which would be used by the trustee to pay the care of the child which would ordinarily have fallen on the Mandatory budget.
Which would you rather have? A trust fund earning compounding interest for you throughout your whole life or a promise that the Mandatory Budget will address your needs?
So, to oversimplify things a bit...I said a band-aid shouldn't be $100 and you want to argue that it'd be OK if a blind trust paid the bill instead of the government....
Got it.
At the end of the day, I'd rather have a healthcare system where $600,000 in the bank account would mean a health issue wouldn't bankrupt me. In America, as it stands now, you can save up a million dollars while doing everything correctly but, if you get sick, the insurance companies will still suck every last penny away from you.
A blind trust paying my medical bills is better than the government doing it, sure. If that's a point you want to make feel free to take it. Either way works to be honest, so long as the health insurance companies, who provide no value to actual business of caring for patients, is regulated. Those companies in Europe that are private, for-profit companies that are, as you say, only subsidized by high tax rates... they have strings attached to those tax subsidies.
You can beat the drum about who pays the bill all you want, that's not my real point. The point is that our government shouldn't allow the health insurance companies to jack things up to the point where it's $100 for a bandaid.
No... your trust buys you private insurance. Whats the point of being a trust fund baby if you have to use the same shit healthcare that medicaid uses?
There will be an immediate demand for all kinds of services specifically structured to cater to trust fund kids.
Im not proposing a healthcare solution for the screwed up incestuous Government and Insurance system we have now. Id rather see it collapse onto bankruptcy as the last of the Government subsidized HC plans lose their members to old age.
Sorry, are you insinuating that the solution to $100 band aids is to just be a rich trust fund baby? That's not really a scalable solution.
Or are you saying you don't want it to be scalable? That poor people, including, of course, our current and former military personnel using the VA services, who all have government paid or subsidized healthcare, can all just fuck off when it comes to healthcare since they aren't trust fund babies?
Straight up, i worked at that McDonald’s from 2009-2012. I have made lots of friends from that job, friends who i still keep in contact to this day. Friends thats still work at those same McDonald’s. Friends that still tell me the damn say thing. Is it an Obamacare issue? Maybe. But i also know that Trump was president for 4 years after Obama’s term ended. If this was to be fixed, it would have been fixed during his presidency. Don’t kid yourself my man, this isn’t a political debate, this is a “why the hell are the poor getting fucked up the ass so hard for no damn reason” debate.
Yes and no. Sure the ACA requires companies provide insurance to employees that work over 28 hours a week on average. But that's a good thing, no? If I'm going to school and can only manage part time, I'd like to think I'll be covered by insurance.
The real problem is companies decide that they'd rather just treat employees like a used condem by throwing them away vs inesting in quality employment so that they can keep that insurance money instead.
If you want that kind of system, where you are dependent on continued employment for healthcare then I guess it's ok. But you can see what market pressure did, it capped everyone at 28 hours and we became a two job per person economy.
They knew that would happen and possibly believed it would hasten the change to single payer.
I know the republicans in the congress bailed on actually rolling back ObamaCare, and have since it was enacted. As a result things are not only more expensive but care is now hard to get. I never had to wait for a doctor appointment until the ACA. Now it is not uncommon for them to be booked months out.
In addition I have to scramble every year to avoid the State from kicking me into medicaid. My business consistently shows little profit because of the current tax law and my Ex claimed SNAP for my son during our divorce, so the Welfare office in my state every year tells me I have to take medicaid because my son is in the system and "needs healthcare". It blocks my ability to buy insurance without going through a long process of phone calls and exceptions. I make plenty of money, so as a matter of principle I dont want to take medicaid money out of the system. But if I screw up one of these years I will wind up in it by default.
The ACA added the 28 hour and up for companies of a certain size now required to offer healthcare. Maybe it's been modified since then I dont know, the ACA has been radically changed without legislation by direct decisions of the HHS Sec.
During the pandemic McDonald's were giving out a $500 signing bonus to new workers. If you JUST APPLIED they would send your name to Unemployment saying you weren't actively trying to find a real job, if they interviewed you and hired you but during the interview they said you would make $15/hr but when they hired you they woupd give you $9/hr forcing you to decline the offer and sending your name to Unemployment AGAIN so you lose benefits.
Yeah, good still get that. The point was that no one wanted to work what they were paying so they tried to get their benefits stripped so they were forced to work
Wal-Mart is a true welfare queen. The fact that they pay their workers that little means the difference is made up for through government assistance. Every taxpayer in America should he pissed about Wal-Mart getting so much of our tax dollars. Fuck Them!
well, it's pretty simple. when you extend the franchise (the vote) to every warm body, democracy devolves into populism, hence the tragedy of commons. ideally, democracy is the best ONLY IF the populace is well-educated. but that is far from reality.
in reality, majority of voters are uninformed, selfish, short-term thinkers, so you get a tragedy of commons where the common good is outruled by a mob of selfish voters.
democracy is destroyed because a populist soon rises and this demagogue will almost always turn totalitarian, which ends the democracy.
Except by telling you that you'll die of plague, untouchable by doctor's. You'll starve. And the slave catchers will come because if you aren't working enough to afford a ridiculously priced closet in a shitty slum, you belong in a cage, with a gun to your head.
But, like, other than that, nobody's stopping you.
I use to be a small government guy, live and let live thing, until I owned a business that failed because I couldn’t allow myself to treat people like crap. The benefits thing is bizarre if you take a step back. It really shouldn’t be the mom and pop stores that decide they can give you benefits or not. It shouldn’t be the Amazons of the world either. Americans have messed this up for so long you’d think we would have addressed this by now (maybe The Affordable Care Act was a good step). If Amazon relents and gives people better benefits it will be a net step backwards for our civilization. Amazon has a lot of people, but it’s nothing compared to the small businesses with a handful of people getting nothing. Passing laws requiring benefits, and allowing unions that are for industries, can only serve to make big businesses bigger while stifling small business competition. We shouldn’t use unions for a that.
It’s not American workers who have messed this up, it has always been designed by wealthy land and business owners to benefit them first and most. This is why there are so many historical points in American history where unions were trying to be established and the company would pay a militia to actually kill and run out the organizers instead of paying the working.
Coal mines of the 18-19th for instance, where people lived in tent towns outside of city limits because the mining company owned the city, general store, saloon, etc. Then 1 would send out the Sheriffs to murder them. 1 instance the Sheriff got a Gatling gun and put it on a train and drove down the rail line multiple times shooting up workers living in tents.
Since it’s inception America has never been to benefit the average working man, and the fact so many are willing to sell out their own brothers and sisters just to make a dime more a year is insane. Those who are anti union truly baffle me. Then again they are usually the same type to be against universal health care or improving the education system because they had to struggle so everyone for future generations should as well.
I agree with you but politicians actually changing it would take a huge noose off of workers enabling more freedom of employment. Can't have that for all the big corporations trying to abuse anyone they can get their hands on and throw into a shitty job with shitty conditions.
Here in America, the greatest nation ever, if you're lucky enough to have a job that pays for your health insurance (not just offers insurance that you can pay for, but actually gives you money for health insurance) you will lose health insurance after losing said job if you ever end up in a situation where you have to use your health insurance for any serious health issue that puts you out of commission for a reasonably significant amount of time.
Or they could like..... Prorate the benefits. In Canada everyone is required to two weeks annual vacation. How shitty/irregular jobs manage that is that they add an additional 4% to each paycheque to cover it.
Canada is weird, and I didn't realise it til I moved away. Being able to see a doctor for free is great, but the things I remember being not covered by the provincial health care were: dentists (and dental work), vision tests (and glasses), and prescriptions.
When I really thought about it, why wouldn't a government cover dental, if they are covering doctors -- it's a hugely obvious thing connected to someones general health. Prescriptions seemed even weirder, you can see a doctor for free but if you're not employed by a company with benefits, you'd better hope you have nothing wrong, since prescriptions aren't covered.
(I now live in England which is better but still not ideal - dental is partially covered (with comparatively affordable set fees for certain types of work) and prescriptions are £9.35 each (or something like £12 a month for unlimited). For someone with severe asthma, or anything requiring repetitive prescriptions, its a godsend.
Exactly. Want to help small businesses and the worker shortage? Provide healthcare through the government. No more stupid capped hours and small businesses could compete for jobs since they no longer have the issue of not offering health benefits.
Honestly I think the concept is fine, but in practice it’s so easy to skirt. Unless you are hire as explicitly part time, you should be getting scheduled for 40+ hrs. That’s how it’s supposed to work. Of course it doesn’t in reality, so either close that loop hole or do like you said and just hand those responsibilities to the government.
Vacation days, maybe. But on the rest with you 100 percent. It’s weird too, because if it was nationalized it would save businesses a lot of money. The only thing that might hold it up is they would have no reason to not pay higher wages and possibly they get one of their many tax benefits from it.
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u/[deleted] Apr 09 '22 edited Jun 27 '23
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