The BBB is a Direct Attack on the Gig Economy
And no one is calling it out.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 17 million Americans who work primarily or exclusively in the gig economy - and I'm one of them.
We drive your Ubers. Deliver your groceries. Walk your dogs. Write your code. Perform your music. Design your websites. Write your books and magazine articles. We tutor your kids online. We hold together the flexible modern economy that the whole nation relies upon, and we do so without any of the protections a traditional job offers.
No employer health care.
No paid sick leave.
No HR.
No safety net.
For many of us, Medicaid is the ONLY option for health care coverage. It's the only thing standing between us and chronic illness and complete financial collapse. For me, given a hugely complex health history caused by a genetic condition called Hereditary Hemochromatosis that has given me heart disease, liver cirrhosis, diabetes, arthritis, and glandular damage, I would be screwed without it.
Just ONE of my medications costs $4000 a month.
And now my health care - MY LIFE - is under attack, solely because Donald Trump and the MAGA Congress want to give billionaires a tax break.
The so-called Big Beautiful Bill (BBB) is gutting Medicaid through insidious work-reporting requirements, supposedly with the intention of getting the lazy and the shiftless "back to work," without understanding a simple truth: WE'RE WORKING ALREADY, but we don't punch a clock, and so many of us are ashamed (irrationally) of BEING on Medicaid in the first place, that we keep our mouths shut about our individual circumstances. At least that's how I've been feeling until the reality of my situation came to the fore with the vote yesterday in the Senate.
Here's the trick: If you work a 9-to-5, you can easily prove your hours on a timesheet, but if you're one of us, what the hell are we supposed to do? What are those of us who hustle five or six gigs a week to get by supposed to do with these new work requirements? How am I going to be able to justify the hours of work I do every week, lesson planning and grading, to the government? How am I supposed to quantify the time I spend researching an article I'm writing on spec?
Again, there are 17 MILLION of us in America - a number eerily close to the estimates of how many will lose their Medicaid under the BBB - who work in the gig economy and the GOP is writing every single one of us off in order to give Jeff Fucking Bezos and some tech bros a tax break.
It is infuriating. Absolutely infuriating.
I beg all of you out there who are in the same position to lose the shame that has kept you silent and speak up about your personal situations. Share this post - or write one yourself - and stand up for your rights - for OUR rights.
Workers in the gig economy are directly targeted by this monstrosity of a bill and we need to raise absolute hell to stop the bastards from making life even harder for all of us.
I'm on Medicaid.
I work hard.
I'm not ashamed of it.
And some fucking billionaire who donated more money to the GOP in one election season than I'll see in my entire life, doesn't deserve ANOTHER million dollar tax break, while I lose my heath insurance and maybe my life.
No. Fucking. Way.
The GOP is waging economic war on the gig economy and they should NOT be allowed to get away with it.
Get loud.
Get angry.
Demand they kill this bill.
And if they don't, then let's send the lot of them to the unemployment line in November of 2026.
Enough.
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22JoBeth McDaniel, Aaron Speca and 20 others