In a passing age, now behind us, chattel slavery was done away with as inefficient, for the owner had to feed and house his human property. Since the replacement of chattel slavery with debt slavery and income tax, the debt-holder and employer has had the goal of further limiting commitment to the wage slave, both by replacing the population with those from more desperate cultures and by manipulating contracted, terms, laws and benefits.
Today, I got a call from an old coworker, who asked me if I knew of any "cash" doctors as she had recently been forced, through the Affordable Healthcare Act, to drop her medical insurance, which she has faithfully maintained for 35 years.
Betty is a fulltime Union, supermarket employee.
If she were parttime, her medical benefits would cost $50 per month.
Her fulltime benefits cost $450 per a month, so she has dropped out of the program and will be paying a 1-1.5K annual fine for being uninsured. She could not feed, house and transport herself if the insurance premium per month exceeded her weekly income and it now does.
The union is complicit in this and other initiatives to phase out fulltime employees, as a parttime employee pays as much union dues, and favoring parttime employees brings twice the money into union coffers as favoring fulltimers.
This has been called a mistake, a poor plan, good intentions ignorant of unintended consequences. No, this is calculated war on the working class, plain and simple and it's working.
When Your Job Sucks
Goddamnit. The country as a whole is paying a fortune compared to other countries like France. Great Britain and Germany and getting worse service "except" we spend more on hopeless cases. We need to have some base care for basic health care at a reasonable rate that is paid for by a large base. Not just employers. All cost should be listed. We maybe could not cover things we cover now like liver failure and stuff like that. To get that you have the money or you just don't get it. The insurance companies are looting us like everyone else.