Only HALF of the American workforce was covered under Social Security, at first.

[PBass]

What a no-good, awful, lousy plan! A lot of the exclusions happened to be Black workers... what a horrible program Social Security was! Why was FDR such a sellout? Why didn't he try harder?



Who was excluded from SS coverage in 1935:

Domestic workers
Farm workers
Self-employed individuals
Persons working in the nonprofit sector
Professionals such as self-employed doctors, lawyers, and ministers
Seamen in the merchant marine
Employees of charitable or educational foundations
Employees of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
Persons aged 65 or older

http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v70n4/v70n4p49.html

How many times was the Social Security program amended? A quick review indicates dozens of amendments to expand the coverage, between 1935 and now.

http://www.ssa.gov/history/reports/crsleghist2.html

I guess with the benefit of hindsight, the liberal purists have stopped calling FDR a sellout.

[pnwmom]

1. Thanks for the timely reminder. n/t

[HiPointDem]

2. which amendment made people buy insurance from a private corporation?

[Skittles]

3. they really do reach

[PBass]

4. I dunno, but you can't opt out of Social Security deductions voluntarily

so your post is kinda pointless.

I bet these folks grow their own food and sew their own clothes. Not paying any money to corporations, that seems really difficult, but I admire your ability to do it!!

(You know what other corporations are screwing Americans? The telecom industry. Yet here you are, paying for the internet.)

[HiPointDem]

5. and the op is kind of skewed as well. for example, persons over 65 *were* covered in the original

ss law, just not under the ss program they hadn't paid into.

PPROPRIATION

SECTION 1. For the purpose of enabling each State to furnish financial assistance, as far as practicable under the conditions in such State, to aged needy individuals, there is hereby authorized to be appropriated for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1936, the sum of $49,750,000 and there is hereby authorized to be appropriated for each fiscal year thereafter a sum sufficient to carry out the purposes of this title. The sums made available under this section shall be used for making payments to States which have submitted, and had approved by the Social Security Board established by Title VII (hereinafter referred to as the Board ), State plans for old-age assistance.

http://www.ssa.gov/history/35acti.html

and since 'everybody' *is* covered under this law, in that everybody is supposed to have insurance, i have no idea why the op thinks he's making such a brilliant point.

SS started out as a PUBLIC program funded by workers & it's remained a public program through its long history.

This health care law is starting out as a PRIVATE INSURANCE PROGRAM, not a health care program. I don't have to pay my SS taxes to a retirement insurance company.

[PBass]

7. It's not "kinda skewed" it's a direct copy/paste from the Social Security website (end)

[HiPointDem]

10. it is kind of skewed, as it omits the context. And that list is not a direct copy/paste.

The Social Security Act of 1935 was an omnibus bill, containing 11 titles authorizing 7 distinct programs, only 1 of which (Title II) was the program we commonly think of as Social Security.3 These various programs had unique features that make presumed equivalences among them sources of serious error.

The Title II program was a new form of federal social provision in which workers and their employers paid taxes into an insurance fund that would pay the workers retirement benefits in the future, typically after many years of paying into the system (when the worker had attained age 65).

Title I was the more familiar state-based welfare program that paid immediate benefits to the needy elderly, using some federal money and some federal policy oversight....

...note that the coverage decision made in 1935 was not to exclude farm and domestic workers, which, had that been the factual circumstance, might have lent more credence to a charge of racial bias. Rather, the decision was to include only those workers regularly employed in commerce and industry. Thus, the coverage decision also excluded the following.

Self-employed individuals (including farm proprietors)
Persons working in the nonprofit sector
Professionals such as self-employed doctors, lawyers, and ministers
Seamen in the merchant marine
Employees of charitable or educational foundations
Employees of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
Persons aged 65 or older
Casual laborers
Members of Congress
Employees of federal, state, and local governments—everyone from the president of the United States to post office clerks


Persons over 65 were excluded because they hadn't paid in. But they were INCLUDED in the original Social Security legislation: continuing federal funds were allocated to the states to provided old-age assistance to those over 65.

I linked that original legislation here:

http://www.ssa.gov/history/35acti.html

[PBass]

19. You're splitting hairs on the minutiae. Boring.

You're referring to Old Age Assistance in Title 1 which is technically different than the insurance program we know as Social Security (Title 2)

[HiPointDem]

22. people over 65 were covered in the original social security act of 1935.

the op is about 1935 (4 years before the first benefits were paid out in 1939, by which time 56% of workers were covered, thanks to the 1939 amendments.)

by 1950, 80% were.

the op is stupid. there's no comparison between this legislation and SS.

this is a private insurance program. how is it magically going to become a public health care program?

ss started as a public program & has remained one. Within 15 years of the original legislation over 80% of us workers were covered.

[SunsetDreams]

6. ACA isn't MAKING you buy insurance

Mandate myths

Myth 1: Everyone is required to buy insurance.

That’s not true. Over 80%* of Americans have insurance through their employers or receive insurance because they are in the military or are veterans or are poor or old. No one in these categories is required to buy individual insurance.

(Actually no one at all has to buy health insurance because, if they fall under that provision and don’t buy it, they can pay the penalty instead. The penalty is far cheaper than the cost of insurance.)

*81% of Americans under 65 have insurance. People over 65 have single-payer coverage; i.e., Medicare (with some holding additional private insurance).

Myth 2: People who don’t have insurance will be forced to buy insurance they can’t afford.

This is also untrue.

People with the lowest incomes are covered under Medicaid, which was expanded by the ACA for those with incomes up to 133% of the poverty level.

For those with incomes between 133% and 400% of the poverty level, subsidies are available so they can afford to buy health coverage in the new health care exchange.

There is a hardship exemption for those who don’t have insurance and say they can’t afford it.

And, as noted under myth 1, no one actually must buy health insurance, since they can pay the penalty instead.

(Please Go To Pollways Link For Other Myths, very informative)

ACA Mandate Myths & How the Affordable Care Law Affects You
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002888920

[HiPointDem]

8. they're not required to buy insurance because they already have it. if they didn't have it, they'd

be required to buy it.

those who don't have it are required to buy it or be punished with a penalty.

[SunsetDreams]

9. Here

For those that are uninsured
Without question, uninsured Americans will be most affected by health care reform. If you don’t have health insurance because you’re unemployed or don’t make enough to afford it, you’re going to get a subsidy to help cover the cost of coverage. The subsidy will be based on your income, but the result will be that at least 30 million people who couldn’t afford insurance will now theoretically be able to.

And if you have lingering doubts that this group of people really needed the government’s help, check out a couple of news stories we recently did about how the uninsured suffer:

This one is called Killer Hospital Bills: it’s about an uninsured woman went to the emergency room with stomach pains and emerged hours later with a $12,000 bill.
And here’s one about a senior citizen who had to file bankruptcy because of health costs.

So the news is good for uninsured Americans who needed and wanted coverage, but there’s another group of uninsured who may not be so happy: those that can afford insurance but choose to forgo the expense by going without. In an effort to encourage all Americans to have health insurance, beginning in 2014 these people will face fines for that kind of risk-taking. The proposed fine is 2.5% of income, up to $2,085, so the incentive to have insurance will be powerful.

http://www.moneytalksnews.com/2010/03/22/how-health-care-reform-will-affect-you/

[HiPointDem]

11. where does that say "you don't have to buy insurance"?

[SunsetDreams]

12. In my previous post,

that was covered. You do not have to buy insurance.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002890691#post6

[HiPointDem]

14. yes, if you already have insurance, you don't have to buy more. and you don't 'have to' buy

insurance, you can just pay $2000 for nothing instead.

okey-dokey.

[SunsetDreams]

15. It's based on income

I'm not sure where you are getting $2000 from, it kind of seems like a number you just through out there.

At any rate, it would be your choice to pay the penalty instead. If you can't afford to buy insurance there are subsidies and hardships that can be applied.

[HiPointDem]

31. i got it from YOUr linked article, post 9. a little over $2000 actually. Yes, unlike some people,

I actually read the content of other people's posts, and the content of my own.

[SunsetDreams]

38. I do read my articles

It's interesting that you picked that number and threw it out there when it is the maximum.

If people pay a $2000 dollar penalty, I'm willing to go out on a limb here and bet they could afford insurance premiums.

[HiPointDem]

40. i threw it out because it was the only hard number mentioned.

[PBass]

29. 2000 dollars? Didn't you mean Eleventy Billion?

I can make up fake numbers too!

[HiPointDem]

33. sunset dreams' post 9. maybe she made it up.

[PBass]

13. Are you splitting hairs on semantics?

If you can't afford health insurance, your insurance will be subsidized. It was bolded for your benefit.

Technically, that means the health insurance company is being paid to insure you. But the taxpayers are covering it. So what? Everybody needs to be insured, in order to make the plan successful.

Read the first post... just like Social Security wasn't perfect for many years, neither will the ACA. Or do thread topics not mean anything here, nowadays?

[HiPointDem]

16. the social security comparison is crap. social security worked the same in 1935 as it does today.

in 1937 56% of civilian workers were covered. that was the first year contributions were made.

regular benefits were first paid out in 1939.

by 1950 80% of workers were covered. the main reason they weren't covered earlier was the war.




in 10 years will we have national health care? no fucking way.

[PBass]

21. Wow, I really like your optimism (sarcasm)

"in 10 years will we have national health care? no fucking way."

So you wanna compare "80% coverage" of Social Security to "national health care", and allow SS 20 years but the ACA only 10? Now who's "skewed"? You're reading your graph wrong, it took 20 years to get to 80% coverage (1955)

You're right, ACA sucks! Give up!

[HiPointDem]

23. 10 years from the time the first SS benefits were paid out to 80% coverage. the original

legislation = 1935. 1937 = taxes began to be collected. 1939 = first regular payments.

there were amendments in 1937 & 1939, then a huge bunch of amendments in 1950.

[PBass]

27. Your graph says "Percentage of civilian workers covered by SS"

Coverage is not "payments".

Also, they don't hit 80% until 1955 (could you find a better graph? Yours is barely readable).

[HiPointDem]

30. Coverage = those who are paying in. Which = those who will get payments at their eligibility.

80% of workers don't get payments at one time.

[SunsetDreams]

25. Here is some history on Social Security Improvements

No it isn't basically the same as it was in 1935

Historical Background and Development of Social Security

1939 Amendments
The Atlantic Charter
1950 Amendments
The Story of COLAs
The Social Security Amendments of 1954 initiated a disability insurance program
The decade of the 1960s brought major changes to the Social Security program.
In the 1970s, SSA became responsible for a new program, Supplemental Security Income (SSI)
The 1972 & 1977 Amendments
Social Security Amendments of 1980
Legislative Changes in 1996 & 1997
Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Improvement Act of 1999
"The Senior Citizens' Freedom to Work Act of 2000

http://www.ssa.gov/history/briefhistory3.html

Fifty Years of Social Security (This was done in 1985, but still informative on improvements to SS)
http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v48n8/v48n8p36.pdf

As you can see, there have been vast improvements. Social Security is not the same as it was in 1935, not at all.

[HiPointDem]

26. yes, it works pretty much exactly as it was set up to do in 1935-37. The majority of those

amendments added coverages (e.g. spousal, cola), or sometimes took it away (the child college benefit) -- but they didn't change the structure of the program.

For example, they didn't change it from a PUBLIC program funded by workers through payroll taxes into a PRIVATE program that workers bought from PRIVATE retirement insurance companies.

[SunsetDreams]

37. But even you admit that they have made

improvements over the years. Improvements mean it isn't the same, it's changed to enhance it.

Even your own graph shows that coverage changed.

[HiPointDem]

39. improvements are basically increased coverage, either of categories of workers or types of

benefits.

and post reagan, the taking away of benefits and the taxing of benefits.

So far though the essential structure of the program hasn't been changed. That's why the OP is such a lousy comparison, because for the HCA to become universal health care, its essential nature/structure would have to be changed.

[SunsetDreams]

42. "increased coverage"

"either of categories of workers or types of benefits"

You don't think the ACA will be improved upon? You think this is it, that's all we are ever going to get. The history of this nation disagrees with you and says PROGRESS is always being made.

I think we are just going to have to agree to disagree here. Nothing new is being added to the conversation by either one of us.

[HiPointDem]

43. maybe it will be improved upon. maybe it won't. i doubt it's going to become a national

health care program within 10 or 20 years. i doubt it is going to keep most people from being subject to bankrupting health care bills within 10 to 20 years either.

[HiPointDem]

20. wrong place

[lovemydog]

17. it excluded seamen

because the right misread it as 'semen'.

[HiPointDem]

18. 10 years after benefits started 80% were. and the main reason it didn't happen earlier was WW2.

[PBass]

24. Look again, your graph says 1955

20 years to get 80% of the workforce covered.

What's the rate of uninsured in Massachusetts? Something like 2%?

Fact is, the comparison to Social Security is pretty good. Not because the programs are similar, but because big nation-wide social programs always have gaps and drawbacks in the beginning stages. You can try to muddy the water with hair splitting, but I'm not buying it.

[HiPointDem]

28. Look again at where the steep jump is. That's the 1950 amendments, which covered farmworkers,

federal employees not under a federal retirement plan, domestic workers and others.

[PBass]

32. You're so sloppy, it's barely worth a reply.

A "steep jump" in 1950 doesn't mean they hit 80% like you claim. That happens around 1955. You can't even read your own graph, and you're just making stuff up.

Good bye!

[HiPointDem]

36. By the mid-fifties NINETY PERCENT were covered.

By 1950...many of the obstacles to universal coverage were not as formidable as they had appeared at the beginning. Thus, legislation enacted in 1950 extended coverage to several major categories of workers, including regularly employed farm and domestic workers; non-farm self-employed persons (except professionals); Federal civilian workers; and, at the election of employees and employers, State and local government employees not covered under another retirement program and employees of nonprofit organizations other than ministers.

...The 1950 amendments included a so-called new-start benefit computation that based benefit amounts on earnings after 1950 and companion provisions for measuring insured status in terms of work after 1950.

Four years later (in 1954), another 10 million workers' jobs were covered; in 1956, another million were added. Social Security legislation enacted in 1954 and 1956 extended coverage to (among others) the farm self-employed, certain groups of professional self-employed (generally with the exception of physicians), members of the uniformed services, and State and local government employees under a retirement system, under various conditions.

Thus, by the mid-1950's, some 20 years after enactment of Social Security, the protection offered under the program was available to 90 percent of workers.

http://www.ssa.gov/history/50mm2.html


Sorry you have such a hard time with facts. run hide your head under the bed.

"Sloppy" equals the person who accused me of making up numbers when I quoted a number posted by one of your co-attackers.

[SunsetDreams]

44. "co-attackers"?

That's silly. Differences of opinion can and do happen. I don't think anyone is attacking you, I know I wasn't.

[HiPointDem]

45. you were actually quite polite. your co-attackers weren't.

[aaaaaa5a]

34. Thread of the day no doubt!

Thanks for posting.

We seem to have a lot of people who don't understand who history works. Or just what a BFD this really is. 50 years from now this is going to look like SS for FDR.

[PBass]

35. My point still stands... SS was deeply flawed for decades,

yet the purists expect the ACA to be a flawless bill, right from the beginning.

[HiPointDem]

41. it was never deeply flawed. deeply flawed = paying private retirement insurers taking a 20% cut.

[PBass]

47. There's a 20% profit? You must be outraged about Food Stamps, then.

That money is going right into the pockets of Big Agribusiness!!!

[HiPointDem]

48. food profits typically under 10%, most typically under 6%. social security admin costs about 2%.

yeah, i think 20% is major.

of course, health care profits are way out of synch with the rest of industry, especially the pharma arm -- the most profitable industry in the us.

[PBass]

49. Under 10% for who? The farm industry? Everybody is taking a cut, every step of the way,

from the manufacturers, to the truckers, the ad agencies/media, and the grocery stores. If you think that 90% of your grocery bill pays for only the basic foodstuffs themselves, you are dreaming. That's not 5 dollars worth of actual foodstuffs in your 5 dollar package of breakfast cereal.

How come we can't convert Food Stamps into a 2% profit program?

[HiPointDem]

50. 20% for the insurance companies. that doesn't count the profits of doctors, hmos, hospitals,

drug companies, medical equipment companies, etc. those are paid with the other 80% that goes to medical care.

i mind that portion less because it's actually productive.

[CBGLuthier]

46. Railroad workers too

They were under their own very fine program created a few years before social security and were later folded into social security but for a while they were separate.

My grandfather drove for the B&O among his many careers. I remember he retired early from the railroad with a back injury and also he collected black lung settlements for the couple years he worked in the mines back in the 20's or so. None of that slowed him down much he made it to his early nineties.

[Honeycombe8]

51. I didn't know that. Thx. k&r.

[On the Road]

52. Thank You -- This is a Really Good Post

Didn't know much about the history of Social Security.

[Catherine Tarry]

53. Spam deleted by Violet_Crumble (MIR Team)

[HiPointDem]

54. Yeah, the program will evolve...but for whose benefit?

Employers, insurers, hospitals, drug makers and others are angling for an advantage as the government writes the regulations and sets the policies that will bring the law to life.

Now that the overhaul law has cleared the Supreme Court, health companies, employers and even some Democrats are turning their attention to reshaping the law at the margins. Louise Radnofsky has details on The News Hub. Photo: AP.

Hospital owners want the government to reduce the $155 billion in health-care payment cuts they agreed to during negotiations over the law. Makers of medical devices hope to roll back a 2.3% tax on their sales contained in the measure. Insurance companies want more leeway to charge older people higher rates than younger ones. Drug makers are aiming at a provision that could squeeze how much Medicare pays for medicine.

"Let's face it, this law is going to be amended and adjusted for years and years to come," said Rick Pollack, executive vice president of the American Hospital Association, a lobbying group.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304830704577497024284229362.html