The government of the United States of America has several programs that would ensure the well-being of its citizens, especially workers and one of them is called the social insurance program. What is this program, what was the history behind it and what are the different types of social insurance programs?
Introduction
The social insurance program was the idea of Franklin D. Roosevelt and was created in order to protect the American citizens from what he called the vicissitudes of life which include disability, being laid off by employers, loss of earnings due to age, and many other setbacks that might happen to anybody. When it was first created in 1935, the Social Security Act was only meant to protect commerce and nonagricultural workers.
But right now, almost all kinds of jobs are covered by it. Not only that, this program also provides support that would be crucial to help people in order to be able to gain any skills they would need to be employed and then able to make ends meet for themselves and their families. Almost every single one of the citizens of the United States of America get the benefits of this program at some point.
The Different Types of the Program
There are a couple of different types of social insurance programs with also different eligibility requirements in the USA. There’s the OASDI which stands for Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance. The OASDI is what most American citizens normally called Social Security. This program would give any citizen monthly benefits that are specifically designed to help people dealing with loss of income due to various reasons which are disability, retirement or death.
Unemployment insurance is the next type of this insurance program. This particular program is created to help people who are suddenly unemployed involuntarily. But to be eligible for this program, one has to be registered as an employee of a public office and must still be able to work. One would get a weekly benefit in which the amount varies depending on the amount of previous earnings and the state’s formula.
Next is the first type to be widely developed in the US and it is called workers’ compensation. The first worker’s compensation program was enacted in 1908 to cover employees who are working in certain hazardous environments. In 1911 a similar program was created to protect workers in private industries and then in 1949, all states finally enacted this program to give benefits for workers who are injured, sick or disabled because of doing their jobs.
The last one in types of social insurance programs is temporary disability insurance which is also called cash sickness benefits. This would provide employees with compensation if they have to deal with loss of earnings due to temporary disability that is not work related. But this las type of social insurance program is rare since only five states have it plus Puerto Rico and the railroad industry.