While discussing Obama's Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) over a delicious home-made soup one night, some garment workers asked our comrades about Obamacare.
"I work in a shop with less than 50 workers. How will the law affect me?" said one. "Where I work there are over 300 workers. Will the bosses be obligated to give us all health care coverage" asked the other.
"We don't know," we admitted, "but we will investigate it and publish our findings in Red Flag."
"That will really be good because garment workers and others need to know. Thank you," they concluded before saying good night. The hype about Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act, or ACA) is that it is supposed to provide health insurance for everyone. Many undocumented workers hope that passage of the CIR by the House of Representatives will better their lives. A big part of that means getting health insurance for themselves and their family.
However, the immigration reform bill recently passed by the Senate explicitly excludes from Obamacare the immigrants whom the CIR would put on the path to citizenship. They won't be subject to ACA's health insurance mandate. They won't be fined for not having insurance, and they won't be eligible for any subsidies to make healthcare more affordable.
Bosses employing fewer than 50 workers are not obligated to give RPI workers health insurance. RPI workers in these businesses will not have health coverage unless they can afford to pay for it.
Where ACA gets tricky is when it comes to businesses employing more than 50 full-time workers. The law stipulates that, by 2015, these bosses must provide their employees with health insurance or pay a fine of $3,000 yearly per worker. The law also stipulates that RPI workers are eligible for employerprovided health insurance and cannot be discriminated against because of their immigration status.
This guarantees that RPI workers and their families will get employer-provided health insurance, right? Wrong! According to the National Immigration Law Center:
"The exclusion of RPI's under the Senate version of the immigration reform bill creates an 'unintended loophole' under the ACA for large employers. After 2014, any employer with 50 or more employees will be required either to provide comprehensive health insurance to their employees or to pay a fee. However, the employer is required to pay this fee only when an employee purchases health insurance in the health insurance market place and obtains a premium tax credit under the ACA."
But since immigrants with RPI status are not eligible for premium tax credits, "a large employer could potentially avoid paying its 'shared responsibility' fee under the ACA even if it fails to provide these eligible employees affordable employer-sponsored coverage as required by law." (www.nilc.org/hlthcarebensS744.htm)
Thus, these bosses could deny RPI workers insurance and not have to pay a dime! Obama's CIR is a pathway to protracted slave labor! This vile racism against undocumented immigrants is the point of the bayonet in the US bosses' attacks on all workers.
Capitalism makes healthcare a commodity that most people in the world can't afford to buy. Capitalism decides who lives and who dies. The ACA will raise deductibles for all workers, making healthcare more costly and out of reach for more and more workers.
In communism, nothing will be bought and sold. Healthcare will be readily available to every person at the highest level society can collectively provide. Communism will not have different rules or levels of healthcare for different groups of workers.
Communism will enable everyone to live a healthy life, mobilizing masses in collectives that value and encourage everyone's contribution. Massively we will learn how to care for each other. Masses will help develop new knowledge about the human body, advancing medical science collectively through practice.
Guaranteeing the health, political consciousness and well-being of workers will be the main goal of communist society. We invite our garment worker friends and all Red Flag readers to make this a massive fight now.

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