Workers Comp is law in every State except Texas. It is roughly equivalent to WorkSafe, but in USA employers can deduct payments from Employees to cover it.
Well, that is surprising.
I’d have thought there were parallels with medicare there.
San Fran is the anomaly. Cashed up companies half of whom don’t really care about bottom line, trying to attract highly educated and skilled workers who have masters or phds from the best universities in America. Of course that market has good benefits, you can’t get employees otherwise.
It’s the non skilled workers from middle of nowhere that are getting screwed.
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As a San Francisco resident I agree.
There is a flip side where employers (like small business, restaurants, etc) who can’t afford to provide decent health insurance are having trouble hiring workers.
As @Preliminary_Point2 touched on, San Fran is an anomaly. My company has a subsidiary in Wisconsin and it’s a completely different picture. Night and day difference.
That’s assuming they keep the Senate and lose the White House, which I can’t really see happening tbh. Republicans will either keep both or lose both imo, the only way I can see Trump losing and the Rs holding the Senate is if you have some centrist Democrat who scrapes through on the anti-Trump sentiment and even then a centrist Democrat is unlikely to go against their private health insurer donors.
I agree with you that the Health Insurance Lobby will throw everything they have against Medicare, and so will the rightwing and the centrists in DC, but that may not be enough. Even then there will be some ‘moderate’ Republicans from the non-crazy states that will vote in support of it because it will give them a personal election boost.
Medicare is an incredibly popular program for those who already have access to it and it’s not exactly a difficult program to sell to those who aren’t. 10s of thousands of people are literally dying in the street or selling their homes to keep themselves or their loved ones alive. People see how much they are spending on their insurance every year and how little they are getting in return, they are seeing the skyrocketing price of medications. Businesses who are providing insurance would also benefit as they would no longer need to fork out thousands of dollars each year.
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Yeah but socialism.
I’d back the Republicans to keep the senate. Heaps of small states who vote red won’t be dislodged, but the bigger Midwest states with bigger electoral college votes swing back to democrats giving the presidency. You don’t need to win the majority of states to win the presidency.
There’s no doubt the Senate favours Republican’s thanks to gerrymandering and institutional bias, however, most of the 2020 Senate races are Red seats, and we’ve seen that all the energy is with Democrats due mainly to female turnout, there were some huge swings in the midterms, the Republicans were lucky they were protected in the Senate by only having a few red seats up for elections.
And if Bernie does win the nomination and runs his populist campaign the combination of the two could turn quite a few seats blue. I’d expect Bernie to do surprisingly well in the smaller working class states. And that’s assuming Trump hasn’t scuppered himself by the time the election comes around.
It’s arguably the most important aspect of the 2020 elections and if the Dems nominate the wrong candidate they may win the Presidential battle and still lose the war. Which is why Beto shouldn’t be anywhere near Iowa at the moment.
These are the seats up for grabs.
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Yep, San Francisco is different.
I spent weeks talking with Venture Capitalists and others with all sorts of investment options. We have had to re-think our strategy, as we have a working high tech product, we have customers, we don’t have debt and we own all our IP with strong Patents across the world, and we have a feasible plan for dynamic growth in the next 3 years, offering investment return of over 30% pa; but we are not going to be a Billion dollar company in 5 years.
So other groups with me on our Austrade Landing Pad, have a concept; no actual product, no Patents, some IP, but are in the software/web/App space and potentially could have an outside chance of being another Uber; along with hundreds of others. These guys got all the traction and interest; and @Preliminary_Point2 what you said was exactly what the high flyers said. Profit don’t cut it; turn-over is the name of the game.
So I have come home, and we are working on a software concept that uses our hardware, and that of others, and fits the points made to me by all the investment gurus. Now all I need is a handsome and trendy presentable guy or gal, who I can call a “Founder” and we are off and running.
Old white haired blokes like me, can only run for President.
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I laughed so hard. You nailed Silicon Valley and my fair city slightly to its north to a “T”. 
Hey Mr Mania, I am not talking to you. I offered free beer, free food and your pick of the girls at the Condor Club !!
But no, you were too busy making your next Million !!
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You mean my “first” million 
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Sorry for the delay, been very busy plus ill. 
See this link: Most Americans Still Rate Their Healthcare Quite Positively
From a gallup poll from last December. Generally, you’re Americans don’t rate their health system, BUT, they generally rate their own health cover. Which is why any plans that involve taking people off their own cover are so fraught.
A lot of the initial angst over the ACA was when people thought they were having to give up their plans. Remember the whole issue of Obama saying you’d be able to keep your plan and doctor? Well, that was just for the private market, any change to employer sponsored health plans would affect way more people.
In my view, what should be done is:
- Medicare should be offered to everyone for a fee. Its cheaper anyway, so this will put pressure on costs and incentivise people to voluntarily switch.
- Allow Medicare/Medicaid to use its purchasing power to get better deals on drugs and hospitals, and to force people using it to use generic drugs.
- Cap the subsidies of employer sponsored health care at the average government contribution. This would mean rich people don’t get more government money for their health plans.
I think the natural cheapness of medicare would naturally result in many Americans and employers switching over.
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Are you sure about that? I thought only a handful of US states had no-fault workers’ comp schemes. I thought most of them were the same as the UK - fault based common law cover where it was mandatory for employers to purchase insurance.
But, but … Communism! Socialism! Facism! All BAAAADDDDDD!!!1
When I was in San Francisco at my Austrade Landing Pad, we had a session with Lawyers and Accountants. That was strange enough, as they all seem to specialise in very specific areas, and all the Lawyers, except the Immigration lawyer could only practice in one State.
Anyway both a Lawyer and an Accountant talked about taxes and employment contracts, and they were asked specifically about workers compensation insurance. One of our group explained Worksafe in Australia and both the Lawyer and Accountant said that there were similar (didn’t say the same) laws in all States except Texas. They didn’t get into detail but did say that an employer can deduct insurance costs from employee wages !!
The other thing that was sort of strange was that employment contracts are not really contracts as we would know it. As if you want to sack someone, you can do it instantly without any reason, or if you want to quit a job you do not have to give notice and just work out and not come back.
16 years ago Bush Jnr went to war against Iraq based on a pack of lies.
The main architects and pushers of this travesty are somehow still part of mainstream U.S discourse when at best they should be relegated to the extreme fringes of society and mocked, at worst tried as war criminals.
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Is this belief shared by those without health cover? It’s a bit of a skewed sample…
Its especially skewed by the fact that the main utilisers of health insurance are the old - who are on medicaid. Its much easier to love your health insurance when you haven’t actually used it.
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