Slavery never went away in 'Murica
It was just rebranded
this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2026
712 points (99.6% liked)
Work Reform
17521 readers
1454 users here now
A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
Our Philosophies:
- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
- Income inequality is the main cause of lower living standards.
- Workers must join together and fight back for what is rightfully theirs.
- We must not be divided and conquered. Workers gain the most when they focus on unifying issues.
Our Goals
- Higher wages for underpaid workers.
- Better worker representation, including but not limited to unions.
- Better and fewer working hours.
- Stimulating a massive wave of worker organizing in the United States and beyond.
- Organizing and supporting political causes and campaigns that put workers first.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
They want to get rid of the only thing that keeps 90% of people working at shit jobs, thats some real consultant level smarts right there.
Wait, you mean I can get healthcare in prison?
I doubt its good quality healthcare, and you'll probably still be forced into slave labor, only being paid 7.5cents an hour instead of 7.50 an hour.
And they can just deny it to you without any repercussions.
Maybe we could push public healthcare if we rephrase it as subsidizing companies, might as well try right?
So I recently read "dying of whiteness" after seeing someone go on about it here. There's apparently a lot of people that would rather personally die than let black people have health insurance
I’ve been saying for years that we need to frame it as an issue of international market competitiveness. GM and Ford, for example, could be more competitive on price with Honda and Toyota if they weren’t paying for health insurance for their current employees and pensioners.
From what I can tell from this article, Disney isn't covering spouses who have their own healthcare coverage through their jobs, Starbucks is not covering GLP-1 as much, and Deloitte is reducing paid parental leave and IVF.
Even Trump before said he favoured affordable healthcare because it means not tying healthcare to employers. Now, he did a u-turn probably because he's going senile and having been bought by the insurance industry.
I thought they were required by law.
And for the ones where it is, they'll just choose United, and then you can't get healthcare anyway because none of the clinics will bill United Health because of their denial rate.
Literally not a single physical therapy office, occupational therapy office, immunotherapy, asthma clinic, or essentially any other outpatient facility within 100 miles of me takes United Health.
And they've managed to swindle this in such a way that I can't even appeal denied claims because they do this in such a manner: the claim is considered invalid from the provider's side until the provider follows an appeals process for every single claim (which many of these providers cannot do). They don't have the resources to go through an appeals process for every claim, which requires their doctors to actually be on the phone with United.
Can confirm. Going through this bullshit with United Hellcare with trying to establish psych care. It's like they are actively trying to prevent me from finding a doctor and it isn't doing any favors for my already struggling mental health
It's like they are actively trying to prevent me from finding a doctor
They are. The less you use their services, the more money they make.
alot of insurance actually tries to discourage people from using thier services, just exhaust the cusotmers until they stop trying to use the insurance. i think UHC does it more often.
they are likely using AI to auto-deny now more than ever.
If no one takes their insurance, they aren't actually insurance, they are a ponzi scheme.
A ponzi scheme is a very specific type of scam, and this isn't it.
No Wonder Luigi did it, holy shit
probably denied PT/medication for his chronic back pain, one of the things alot of insurance doesnt want to pay for is chronic care for things like this, paying physical therapist is pricey, mental health is another, and medicaiton for it. the other things one of my insurnace doesnt like if you ask for BIOLOGIC medication.
for a while BCBS was one of the bad ones, im guessing UHG is pretty bad too. i think optum one of thier subsidiaries also terrible.
Worst of all, these fuckers are the reason why when I try to type "unless" on my swipe keyboard, half the time it types United instead.
They're not dumping health insurance altogether, they're just shrinking the coverage.
or they are passing more of the cost to the employee. shrinking includes choosing a shittier insurance that covers less.
Law is meaningless without enforcement and Trump destroyed all of the consumer watchdogs.
90% of Democrats will do nothing to improve the status quo. We need a revolution.
I'm curious if this "progressive" movement takes hold. This could be for the democrats what the tea party was for the Republicans. The RNC did everything it could to push out the tea party faction, but they won and took over the party.
Maybe the new wave of Democratic socialists can do the same to the DNC.
Then again I'm not sure we can survive the 2 or 3 election cycles necessary to get there
You really gotta hold their feet to the fire to.get them to do anything. If they won't, primary them again
Which Democrats? You did not clarify, and it matters, especially when you are using defeatist rhetoric...
DNC leadership, the rotating villains that help pass ghoulish legislation, and the rank-and-file Dems who are happy to go on the news to criticize the DSA (who are not socialists, just pro- regulation and social services, aka governing). Pro-corprate and pro-AIPAC Dems need to be defeated just as much as Republicans.
Or switching to worse providers, like UHC of all things.
I really struggle to understand HR's thought process there, seeing the news and still deciding to make that choice.
My understanding is HR's thought process is "..... ... ... .... ..... .... .... .... ......."
What are you gonna do, get a new job? -HR probably
Push everyone onto the private market and jack the prices up with worse service. Just like everything else.
Because even though the employer health care was shitty for a lot of reasons it did have one thing going for it: the ability of a powerful corporation to negotiate the best rates it could in order to keep its costs down.
If it’s no longer tied to jobs, we lose that last advantage.
If the market worked, sure. Eventually it became a selling point that looks acceptable to job applicants, but is practically useless when needed. Tons of market failures because of all the monopolies.
I’m not arguing in favor of employer health care. I’m only pointing out the single benefit it offered vs health care being run like Netflix or any other subscription service that enshittifies further and charges you more every chance it gets.
But in reality we don't get that collective bargaining benefit at all because the employer doesn't represent our interests. They're getting the entire surplus.
Imagine a corrupt union, that bargains on your behalf but takes nearly all the surplus. Your employer is even worse than that.
I don’t disagree with any of that. The corporation is negotiating for itself, not us.
There was another reason: Employer-provided health insurance is not taxed as income in the US. This is the main reason healthcare is tied to employment.
I don't understand the connection, tbh.
I know of no place that cites the taxes as a “benefit” or a main reason.
Health care was tied to employment as a means to attract workers. That’s it. The fact any of it is untaxed is at the whim of the government, not the employer. If anything the employer-based health care is a shackle, you lose your job or get fired you lose insurance.
I’m sure if enough people get kicked off employer health care or enough corpos say they’re no longer offering it the government will allow some sort of pre-tax or no-tax income allowance to individuals based on reported health insurance costs.
Maybe.
Yes! It was a horrible idea.
But this is a good thing. People think employers actually pay for their benefits. That’s not how total compensation works.
We need this. It won’t be easy but we need this.
Yeah, it's bad for we poors. But we're not the ones in power.
We're only allowed to have beneficial laws that don't cost the billionaires something.
Only for the employed.