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More people using this isnt a good thing. It's because they can't get full time employment for insurance thru their job
It wouldn't have been enough if Obama got all he asked for. But Dems have held the House and Senate multiple times and show no desire to improve it.
Party leadership should at least be holding votes so that voters in different states can see if their representatives will actually support the party platform.
Health care should never have been dependent on employment in the first place.
It leads to people kowtowing to shitty employers because they can't afford a lapse in health insurance coverage.
As for holding the House and Senate, a mere majority isn't enough when the GOP is determined to filibuster any attempts to do anything to Obamacare except destroy it.
Health care should never have been dependent on employment in the first place
You know what's really depressing?
How that came to happen in America:
Then, in World War II, companies’ grip on employee’s health care got firmer. The federal government established wage controls, limiting how much employers could pay workers. This left businesses competing on other forms of compensation — including health insurance. The government tacitly endorsed this tactic: It did not tax health benefits as income, while also allowing companies to deduct the cost from their taxable revenue. Enrollment in some kind of health insurance grew from some 20 million people in 1940 to more than 142 million in 1950.
We fucking capped salaries.
People want to act like someone saying 100% after a certain threshold is some millennial pipe dream, meanwhile the unironically named "Greatest Generation" flat out said that was too much hassle and there's an upper limit anyone can be paid.
We get rid of it, and wealth equality went crazy and everything else went to shit.
They capped worker salaries to keep costs down during WW2. Strikes were illegal too. Rich people still made a million dollars per year.
If you're right, I've been wrong for 20 years, so I'd appreciate a link showing was literally "workers" and executives were excluded
To my knowledge it limited everyone's salary
I'm not remotely knowledgeable on labor practices of the time period, but at least in the modern era, you can easily pay an executive basically nothing and just give him stock instead, which will wind up being far more valuable than any salary. Mark Zuckerberg, for instance, takes a salary of $1. I wouldn't be shocked if something to that effect existed back then as well.
It wasn't actually an "upper limit" in WW2. It was a 15% limit on wage increases on any union contracts. If you didn't have a union contract, you could be paid whatever.
One of the board's mandates was to ensure that any wage increases granted during a dispute case would not disrupt the wage structure of the nation as a whole and not contribute to ongoing inflationary pressures.[20] These pressures were due to shortages, both in goods and in the labor supply.[10] A key development in this regard came with the "Little Steel" hearing and decision of July 1942.
After hearing arguments for and against, the War Labor Board decided that wage increases should be bounded by the national cost of living increase between January 1941, when prices were stable, and May 1942, when the United States had introduced various anti-inflation measures.[20] Using the cost-of-living index provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this worked out to a fifteen per cent wage increase formula, or forty-four cents per day for the Little Steel employees.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_War_Labor_Board_(1942%E2%80%931945)
That's different, executive order 9250 came after:
In order to correct gross inequities and to provide for greater equality in contributing to the war effort, the Director is authorized to take the necessary action, and to issue the appropriate regulations, so that, insofar as practicable no salary shall be authorized under Title III, Section 4, to the extent that it exceeds $25,000 after the payment of taxes allocable to the sum in excess of $25,000. Provided, however, that such regulations shall make due allowance for the payment of life insurance premiums on policies heretofore issued, and required payments on fixed obligations heretofore incurred, and shall make provision to prevent undue hardship.
Weird how FDR could do so much by executive order back then, and now Dems say nothing substantial can be an executive order now btw...
But Dems have held the House and Senate multiple times and show no desire to improve it.
By "multiple times" you really mean "kinda of one other time since and even then by a razor thin margin".
"In the Senate, Republicans briefly held the majority at the start; however, on January 20, 2021, three new Democratic senators – Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Alex Padilla of California – were sworn in, resulting in 50 seats held by Republicans, 48 seats held by Democrats, and two held by independents who caucus with the Democrats"
...and...
"With Harris serving as the tie breaker in her constitutional role as President of the Senate, Democrats gained control of the Senate, and thereby full control of Congress for the first time since the 111th Congress ended in 2011. "
Not to mention they're still propping up the rent-seekers in the health insurance industry
Well, those rent-seekers are donors.
It has gotten worse year over year for as long as I can remember too. Neither side will ever get us a functional single payer.
Has nothing to do with can't get full time employment. Barely half offer anything at all.
In 2023, 53% of all firms offered some health benefits, similar to the percentage last year (51%). Most firms are very small, leading to fluctuations in the overall offer rate, as the offer rates of small firms can vary widely from year to year.Oct 18, 2023
https://www.kff.org/report-section/ehbs-2023-summary-of-findings/
$461 a month was the cheapest for me
I'm sorry you're saving for retirement so we have to count your savings against you. No state aid for you...
But I have only $20,000 to retire on?
Republiklans: Sucks for you!
I have way less than that unfortunately
That's not really a good sign for the economy. It means the marketplace is a valid option today. It was a pretty awful option in the past. But it means our broken system of relying on companies to provide health insurance is still broken. Companies aren't taking care of people. Medicare for all! (why couldn't Obama Dems have just done that instead?)
Companies provide healthcare in the vast majority of countries with universal healthcare, including in Europe. Government provision of healthcare is really only a thing in the UK, and the NHS's current struggles show that such a model isn't necessarily faultless in practice.
Because they would have had just as little chance of passing it as the Clintons did in the early 90s. Worse, because of the racists in the GOP.
That's completely bullshit. The ACA was passed with zero R votes. They didn't do better because they didn't have the votes from fucking Democrats.
Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut who caucused with Dems, was the 60th vote for the ACA. He killed the single payer portion of the bill, because his state has several insurance companies HQ there and he wanted the payola.
During debate on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), as the crucial 60th vote needed to pass the legislation, his opposition to the public health insurance option was critical to its removal from the resulting bill signed by President Barack Obama.[7]
In order to get passed with zero Republican votes, it first had to get to a vote. Republicans never let universal healthcare get out of committee and to the floor.
Even then there was talk that they didn't have the D votes to pass it. Nowhere near. I guess the world is changing though, healthcare is such a shit show currently that a bunch of my Republican friends and family support Medicare for all now.
What are the distinctions between Obamacare and universal healthcare?
It's a government hosted marketplace where traditional insurance companies offer subsidized plans
Versus a true government funded insurance plan where all taxpayers pay into a plan with minimum coverage, which can be supplemented by private or company funded traditional insurers
Universal healthcare simply describes the situation where essentially all people have access to affordable care.
The simplest model is to have basically all healthcare done and paid for by the government and funded by taxes. This is called single payer, with the National Health Service is Britain being the most famous example, but it's not the only way to get universal coverage, though people who support single payer often conflate the terms. Other European counties have mixes of public and private coverage.
NHS is single-provider, where the government supplies the healthcare directly (e.g., doctors and nurses are NHS employees). Single payer usually refers to systems where the government pays for healthcare, but the healthcare can be supplied by a mix of providers including private sector providers, like in Canada.
But you're right, single payer isn't the same thing as universal healthcare. In practice, the US system with Obamacare can be regarded as a universal healthcare system. Switzerland, which has a similar public-private model, is generally regarded as having universal healthcare. The only subtlety is that the US system makes it pretty easy to opt out entirely, so some fraction of the population ends up not having healthcare access through some combination of bad luck and bad decision-making.
Ah you're definitely right, my bad for over-simplifying a bit. Thanks for clarifying!
Obama copied a plan that had been created in Massachusetts by Republican Governor Mitt Romney. Obama figured that the GOP wouldn't have a problem voting for a plan designed by one of their own. Instead, they went all out against the plan, because they knew that if it became a success Obama would be reelected. Obama called it a 'starter house,' meaning that once it was set up, it could be improved on.
There is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution.
True on software development. Even truer in politics.
Obamacare is still private health insurance, but with a discount coupon applied.
Universal Healthcare is healthcare for everyone.
I was paying $160 a month on Obamacare for the worst insurance. My employer offered insurance but it was more expensive than that. Luckily I have a job now that pays for my health insurance.