The Biden administration says 20 million people have enrolled for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplaces, with still a few days left for signing up

The Biden administration says 20 million people have enrolled for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplaces, with still a few days left for signing up

Some 20 million people have signed up for health insurance this year through the Affordable Care Act marketplaces, a record-breaking figure.

President Joe Biden will likely proclaim those results regularly on the campaign trail for months to come as former President Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner, vows to dismantle the Obama-era program.

The Biden administration announced Wednesday morning that 20 million have enrolled for coverage on the marketplace, days before the open enrollment period is set to close on Jan. 16.

The latest enrollment projections mean a quarter more Americans have signed up for coverage this year compared to last — another record-breaking year when 16.3 million enrolled in the program. Signs-ups spiked after Biden took office, with Democrats rolling out a series of tax breaks that give millions of Americans access to low cost plans, some with zero-dollar premiums.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
    353·
    8 months ago

    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.

    https://www.vox.com/23890764/healthcare-insurance-marketplace-open-enrollment-employer-sponsored-united-blue-cross-shield-aetna

    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.

    • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
      6·
      8 months ago

      They capped worker salaries to keep costs down during WW2. Strikes were illegal too. Rich people still made a million dollars per year.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
        42·
        8 months ago

        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

        • BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social
          31·
          8 months ago

          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.

        • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
          2·
          8 months ago

          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_(1942–1945)

          • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
            11·
            8 months ago

            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.

            https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/executive-order-9250-providing-for-the-stabilizing-the-national-economy

            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…