What you’ve said here is a common refrain oft-repeated. But it holds less water than many folks assume.
The reality is more like
If you have some kind of health problem, it makes it difficult for you to switch jobs to one which has less-good insurance than your current job.
Since insurance is a pretty standard benefit whose goodness/badness pretty well slides along with the scale of wages & other bennies, odds are that a job you’d like to move up to probably has insurance as good or better than the job you’re wanting to leave. Only if you’re desperate to leave a bad job, and are willing to take a crappier job for less wages with crappier bennies, are you likely to suffer a reduction or outright loss of insurance.
Of course ACA was meant to fix this, by making insurance affordably available from somebody (the “marketplace”) other than your employer.
As we all know, ACA as enacted was a pale shadow of ACA as proposed, and is further in constant danger of being gutted any day the Rs happen to remember to think about it.
I think a lot of people still worry about pre-existing conditions. I think ACA got rid of that restriction, but a lot of people are still concerned about it. Also, how many employers enroll you in their insurance plan the day you’re hired? If you have an ongoing medical issue, you might not want, or be able to, wait X months to join, which would mean you’ll likely either have to pay your entire premium out of pocket via COBRA are get find your own health insurance.
Many (maybe most) do – not offering health insurance to an employee on day 1 (more or less) would put an employer at a competitive disadvantage against other employers. However, it does appear that, under the ACA, an employer can wait for as long as 90 days (a “probationary period”) before enrolling a new employee on health insurance.
So if you’re the absolute best at what you do, maybe you’d be fine. But how many employers would quietly shitcan your job application if they knew you might be a problem for their insurance?
That depends hugely on whether your idea of “employer” is “Fortune 500 company for full-time white color job.” or “A different franchise retailer in this small town.”
And if the Fortune 500 company you work for considers you an independent contractor - no insurance from the company for you
Gee, if only there were a way the editors could have somehow warned people this would happen.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/12/26/trump-voters-federal-benefits-food/
Paywalled.
This should work https://wapo.st/41RX138
Thank you.
I get a splash screen saying I must create a free account to redeem the free article. When did that become a thing?
Requires that I make an account to “redeem” this free article.
It became a thing when certain companies discovered they could make money by selling your e-mail to advertisers to make money off a “free” thing.
So, what’s the gist of the article? That Trump is going to slash social benefits and his voters are shocked that their faces will be eaten?
Pretty much. Some of the quotes would be funny if they weren’t so sad
“He is more attuned to the needs of everyone instead of just the rich,” Mosura, 55, said on a recent afternoon. “I think he knows it’s the poor people that got him elected, so I think Trump is going to do more to help us.”
“We helped get you in office; please take care of us,” Mosura said, shifting the conversation as though she were speaking to Trump. “Please don’t cut the things that help the most vulnerable.”
Davis, a retired artist, subsists on a monthly $1,300 Social Security payment and $75 in food stamps. She rents her studio apartment for $385 per month. Asked whether she worries that Trump’s agenda could hurt the poor, Davis said the incoming president is “too smart for that.”
“You can’t wipe out half of the population” of New Castle, Davis said. “We are old and tired and just want to be taken care of, and Trump has too much common sense, so I don’t think he is going to do anything to hurt us.”
I mean really - you want to be taken care of and this is what you voted for?
If she doesn’t know that the Republicans have been running for generations on cutting social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps, I guess she’ll get what she deserves.
“You can’t wipe out half of the population”
Sure you can…
This MSNBC article (one of the few remaining non-subscription services not on the far right now that CNN is gone) is pretty spot on. Not only does it engage with recent (paywalled) WaPo and NYT articles we’ve discussed, it makes explicit reference to the central meme of this thread:
The recent tales of early-stage regret and fear are prompting a sense of grim satisfaction from some on the left. A classic meme — “‘I never thought leopards would eat MY face,’ sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party” — has gone around enough among the rump of the #Resistance to become cliché. The sentiment, though, is clear: Whatever happens, these Trump supporters will be getting what they deserve.
I agree with the sentiment of the opinion piece. Trump is a giant shit sandwich all of us have to swallow, it’s just that some of us have to take bigger bites than others. This makes it hard to take a lot of joy in seeing Trump supporters get their just desserts. But if I hear a Trump supporter bellyaching, I’m going to tell them to keep it to themselves. I don’t want to see them open their mouths unless it’s to take a big bite of the shit sandwich they made.
As Billy Zane’s character said in Titanic, “not the better half.”