How Obamacare Would Have Helped Workers Laid Off By Bain

[Lakhota]

By Aviva Shen

After Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital bought the office supply maker SCM, laid off workers, gutted pay and benefits, and ultimately shut down the entire plant, former SCM employee Valerie Bruton was left with no choice but to turn to the safety net. In the Obama campaign ad, “Romney Economy,” she recalls:

When SCM shut down the doors, that was the first time I’d ever been in the system with food stamps. Then I had to get on Medicaid. It was just, it was rough, but I did it…I had no choice because I had my babies, my babies depended on me.​

She was hardly alone. All 258 employees were fired immediately, then invited to reapply for their jobs at a lower wage and a 50 percent cut in health insurance. When the workers went on strike, the plant was shuttered.

Under Romney, Bain Capital replicated this “vulture capitalism,” laying off workers and slashing health care benefits. In 1993, Bain bought Kansas City’s Worldwide Grinding Systems steel mill. Less than a decade later, the mill was shuttered and 750 people were out of work. But even more importantly, “workers were denied the severance pay and health insurance they’d been promised, and their pension benefits were cut by as much as $400 a month,” reported Reuters. The federal Pension Benefits Guarantee Corp had to make up the difference, which were slashed again in bankruptcy court.

Now that he’s running for president, Romney has promised to repeal Obamacare and replace it with his faith in the free market. Here are two scenarios of how these workers would fare under Obamacare and under Romney’s plan.

More: How Obamacare Would Have Helped Workers Laid Off By Bain | ThinkProgress

 

[Lakhota]

Politics Discuss government policies and candidates...

 

[Stephanie]

good grief...

 

[beagle9]

By Aviva Shen

After Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital bought the office supply maker SCM, laid off workers, gutted pay and benefits, and ultimately shut down the entire plant, former SCM employee Valerie Bruton was left with no choice but to turn to the safety net. In the Obama campaign ad, “Romney Economy,” she recalls:

When SCM shut down the doors, that was the first time I’d ever been in the system with food stamps. Then I had to get on Medicaid. It was just, it was rough, but I did it…I had no choice because I had my babies, my babies depended on me.​

She was hardly alone. All 258 employees were fired immediately, then invited to reapply for their jobs at a lower wage and a 50 percent cut in health insurance. When the workers went on strike, the plant was shuttered.

Under Romney, Bain Capital replicated this “vulture capitalism,” laying off workers and slashing health care benefits. In 1993, Bain bought Kansas City’s Worldwide Grinding Systems steel mill. Less than a decade later, the mill was shuttered and 750 people were out of work. But even more importantly, “workers were denied the severance pay and health insurance they’d been promised, and their pension benefits were cut by as much as $400 a month,” reported Reuters. The federal Pension Benefits Guarantee Corp had to make up the difference, which were slashed again in bankruptcy court.

Now that he’s running for president, Romney has promised to repeal Obamacare and replace it with his faith in the free market. Here are two scenarios of how these workers would fare under Obamacare and under Romney’s plan.

More: How Obamacare Would Have Helped Workers Laid Off By Bain | ThinkProgress

Sadly I know the corruption of what is talked about or implied here, in which resides within men these days, and started a good while back. I began seeing a change in America back in the eighties, where a certain breed of character began arriving on the scene (not sure where it was in which these men came), but they were specific in their duties and in their new frame of mindsets in which they had. No longer was the family feeling to be present amongst employee and employers in the work place anymore, and those who held onto these ways and feelings in which were representitive of American character back in the day, were quickly sent packing by these newbies. They were told that they wouldnot fit with the new direction in which the companies were going in anylonger, and they had to go. Soon after that it seemed that all Hell began breaking lose in America from the east to the west, and within her long standing companies it began to burn like a wildfire out of control quickly. Restructuring of old longstanding companies began along with this so called deregulation, with talk of we are going to have to get leaner and MEANER as the future comes in view was the constant mantra being yelled from the roof tops, but what it turned out to be, was MEANER AND GREEDIER, until such time as the golden parachutes began to fly. These cats are sitting pretty to this day, and they could care less what happens to anyone else in America, as they had emplemented their plans to perfection. The fall out came and it is trying to go, but still there are some who still are looking to continue the trend, as there are still large companies just sitting out there vulnerable for the killing, and these cats won't rest until their dead, and all the money in their pockets somehow. TRUST ME I KNOW and have seen it with my own eyes!

I just don't care for Obama however, because I think he is vulnerable to the divisivness of the black and white issue in America (racism), where as he is under huge pressures always by this issue. He could be a president for all Americans within reason, but he chooses to be led by a few who demand he be president for them and for them only. I can't stand by a president who is under this sort of pressure, and then gives into it constantly, even though he may pick a few very good issues to run on such as with this health care issue, it just doesn't negate his radical associations, and what he has not said or shown to be his position on many across the board American issues, where as instead he has bogged himself down or places himself into a box found within extreme liberalism and extreme multi-culturalism issues as being his best cup of tea at the end of the day.

We need an American President who will represent the good majority again in this nation, and not shut down the good majority due to extreme liberal pressures being brought, and especially when that majority is right on certain issues and the others are not.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Let me see if I understand you here, if Obamacare had been around back then she could have claimed that Obamacare helped her get food stamps and Medicare.

Can't say I am impressed.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

How Obamacare Would Have Helped Workers Laid Off By Bain

And how it will help workers in the future when more layoffs are implemented to maximize profits.

 

[Trajan]

How Obamacare Would Have Helped Workers Laid Off By Bain

And how it will help workers in the future when more layoffs are implemented to maximize profits.

tissue?

 

[Stephanie]

How Obamacare Would Have Helped Workers Laid Off By Bain

And how it will help workers in the future when more layoffs are implemented to maximize profits.

oh yeah, something to look forward, welfare, food stamps, and ObamaTAX
just the life most Amercians strived for when they came here

 

[beagle9]

How Obamacare Would Have Helped Workers Laid Off By Bain

And how it will help workers in the future when more layoffs are implemented to maximize profits.

oh yeah, something to look forward, welfare, food stamps, and ObamaTAX
just the life most Amercians strived for when they came here

Who gave it all to Obama on a silver platter ? The greed driven rich did, who cared not for anyone or anything but their own greedy selves in life for a period of time in which we did observe in them, so they get what they get as a result of their idiotic actions and classwarfare in which was invented and played by them for years now. Now the soldiers are at the gates, for whom have formed an alliance therefore against them, and we shall all see now just how it is played out on the nations stage. Obama has walked into a situation where the Repubs had left far to many of the nations hard workers lying by the wayside with no where to go (abandoning their soldiers/supporters), and they did this for silver and gold found in extreme profit gouging and the taking of, now the soldiers of Hope and Change have come their way, and the officers (repubs) who have no troops but a few left behind them, are trying to fight the Hope and Change army back, yet they have not enough troops anylonger to carry the day, so they hope their money will carry the day for them, and this is what thrusted Obama into office with overwhelming support when he was elected.

Isn't it Ironic what greed will do, and how it makes one think that money will always win the day without an army supporting that money as it stood once back in the day ? I just sit here in amazement of how this nation is groaning and moaning over what has taken place, but doesn't realize as of yet who caused it all to take place over a precise period of time. They are right before our very eyes still, holding on to whatever last bits of freedom in which they have cheaply paid for (not with righteousness & honestly), but paid for with their greed, in which has not stood the day nor will carry the day anylonger for them.

All the rebellion in which we have seen, and are still seeing, is a direct result of greed in which has taken place in this nation for quite sometime now, and it was all without challenge due to the fear of the ones who had the money, and did control that money, even though it was being born out of greed. A person or persons whom hath no support behind their money, only has the money and false security in which it gives them, and is therefore likened to the sower and the seed when read about in the bible. The story is a good one in order to compare it to the character of those who had done this to the nation, while others (the real Americans) were trying to counter the greed in everyway that they could. I wonder where the greedy doth fall within the story, and this in comparrison to these days and their ways in which we do now know about ?

I am no Obama fan, but I know who has empowered him, and what he is running on. He was smart enough to see the hurt out there, and he capitalized on it. Now is he Obama leading the nation in the right direction ? On some things yes, but on others I say no, because he is the opposite of what we all do believe when things are good in America, and that is personal responsibility where freedom is found wrapped up in personal responsibility, but Obama wants the government to be stronger than the citizenry, in order to control the citizenry at every junction in which is no good also. We have a bad situation on our hands in America now, where as we have two people running, that may not represent the nation as it should be, and yet either one could lead her down the paths of classwarfare even farther than she had ever went before. This becomes the recipe for war/uprisings or total oppressive control by one side or the other in trying to sort this all back out. Lets just hope that it is settled at the voting booth as it should be..

Good Luck America, and may God have mercy upon you in the coming years....