Politics and Religion
The 30 hour threshold requiring large employers to furnish employee Health care has cost millions of lower income employees, billions, perhaps trillions of dollars of earned income. while drastically raising profits of big business.
When lower middle class by the millions are suddenly turning poor, there is something drastically wrong .
Before the ACA many more companies helped with health insurance for employees without Government mandating it, with as little as minimum 20 hours per week .
My job before the ACA required me to work minimum 40 hours per week. Low deductible Health insurance including dental and vision, was included as part of my pay package.
Most weeks I could work 50 hours per week, often 60 hours . With some overtime pay I could afford good food, a decent studio apartment, bus fare and occasional hookers .
After ACA my boss doubled his work force, we are not permitted to work over 29 hours per week, most of us are scheduled an average 24. The company no longer furnishes Health insurance
for any hourly employees.
Now I work three different jobs bringing home less than I earned at one company, while working more total hours now . Once again the Government inadvertently hurts lower income Americans when they did not
consider consequences of their actions.
More often than not there are bad results when attorneys out of touch with reality make laws to help the less fortunate.
My full time job before the ACA 40 hours x 12.00 = 480.00 10 hours overtime = $ 180.00
gross pay 50 hours $660.00 Health care paid by Company.
My same job after ACA 24 hours @ 12.00 = 288.00
My new second job at Burgers4URus 26 hours @ 8.00 = 208.00
My third part time job at Fry Palace 23 hours @ 8.25 = 189.75
Totals 73 hours = $ 685.75 . After deducting health insurance , extra bus fares going to and from my second and third job, more coffee to help stay awake at work, I have much less disposable income in my pocket with hardly any time for hookers.
Most of my fellow employees are in terrible financial shape, they were not as lucky as me in finding other part time jobs.
if I wasn't willing to swallow my pride and learn to work outside my janitorial field of expertise, I could also be in financial dire straits.
A man too old to learn is already dead. The good news, I'm learning how to weld at my local trade center.
I heard there are many new welders needed in oil exploration and extraction, and building the new Keystone pipeline
I'll give you extra credit today, for giving your version of a straight answer to
my OP question.
Lower income people did not have insurance you fool. That’s what is called uninsured. Uninsured has fallen in 2014 and expected to fall even more in 2015.
Change should be universal coverage and single payer and let those who can afford private insurance have their own. This is what is done in all industrialized countries where intelligent people live.
You are treating the ACA as a miracle cure for the poor with catastrophic illness and financial pain while trapped behind your iron bar windows, security guards and opulent gates.
The lower middle class and poor will "almost always" go bankrupt if they develop a rare chronic disease like MLS, ALS, or any disease restricting their ability to work long term, regardless of their Health insurance plan. Once they can't work, they won't be able to pay their minimal insurance payment or afford enough food to survive.
When the poor with good health, with or without Health insurance, aren't working enough to pay their bills, it's more often than not a short trip to insolvency and bad health.
It sounds like you are in favor of the ACA because it's fair by helping your wallet versus yesteryear, when the poor downtrodden walked into the emergency room for free , for the Flu or terminal care, without an insurance policy.
Perhaps you didn't answer my OP question, instead succumbing to your own cravings , because you don't fathom how the majority of poor and lower middle class live week to week.
Making laws that give the poor Health insurance while inadvertently taking away part of their income and ability to feed themselves, is not my idea of truly helping the less fortunate, though
it does looks great on paper, especially among government paper shufflers.
As I stated in my OP, my biggest issue with the ACA is the 30 hour rule . Politicians should know by now, most CEO's are much wiser than them, and usually find a way to duck around new rules
This isn't the first time laws designed by bumbling bureaucrats to help the poor in one way, hurt them another way.
If the government's motive had truly been to help the poor when writing ACA laws, they would have required large Companies with employees working one hour or more, guaranteed Health Care.
In my OP I asked for a 42 hour requirement since I would rather work more than less.
If you are really concerned about the poor and their finances during times of catastrophic loss, why not give lower income employees a disability income insurance policy, at the same pay as their annual income, similar to the DI policy you and your neighbors have ?
.
But I would respectfully suggest that this comparison is really only valid if you stay healthy and don’t need to use the health care package very often.
If, for example, you developed leukemia and needed a bone marrow transplant under your pre-ACA package you would hit the annual benefit limit in a couple of months. Or if you developed a chronic disease like MS, ALS or on anything requiring dialysis, you would hit the $1 million lifetime limit long before you died. In both cases, you would have no ability to pay for the essential health care you needed.
Under the ACA, there is no “annul limit” or lifetime limit under your policy. If catastrophe occurs, you are protected.
Now, you may say “hey, I’m willing to take that risk. I don’t like the government telling me to act responsibly.” That is not an entirely unreasonable position. But the problem is, when you can’t pay for your health care, someone else has to do it. So when I hear that objection from the healthy - and it is always the healthy who raise it - it always rings phony to me.
The bottom line – more work for you and fewer hookers – but you are now protected for life so long as you keep paying those premiums. And you will be entitled to a substantial subsidy to help pay those premiums. Before we start changing the ACA to get rid of some of the troubling but symbiotic provisions, let’s make sure we really understand what we really have now.