HP-13 | Social Security and National Worker Protection

HP-13 proposes an integrated national framework for retirement security, survivor protection, disability, family and medical leave, and employment injury.

These protections address different circumstances, but those circumstances frequently overlap. An injury may become a disability. An illness may require family caregiving. Disability can continue into retirement. The death of a wage earner can immediately affect the economic security of a surviving spouse and children.

Rather than requiring individuals to navigate separate systems whenever circumstances change, HP-13 proposes one coordinated framework with one record, one entry point, clear responsibility, and minimum disturbance to the person receiving protection.

This page is a plain-language presentation of the HP-13 proposal. The controlling working edition and supporting documents are available in Research & Documents below.

Overview

The Problem

The United States has developed protections for retirement, disability, family and medical leave, and workplace injury over many decades. Those protections were created at different times, for different purposes, under different laws and through different federal, state, employer, insurance, and administrative systems.

The result is fragmented responsibility.

A worker injured on the job may encounter different systems for medical care, wage replacement, employment protection, rehabilitation, and disability. A person whose medical condition reduces rather than completely eliminates earning capacity may encounter rules designed around a more absolute definition of disability. Family and medical leave protections can differ according to employment circumstances and location. A lifetime of work does not necessarily produce retirement income sufficient to maintain a minimum standard of living.

These circumstances also overlap. An injury can become a disability. Disability can affect retirement. Illness can require family caregiving. The death of a worker can make survivor protection and household retirement security part of the same event.

HP-13 proposes that people should not have to bear the administrative consequences of those protections having developed separately.

The Proposal

HP-13 proposes a coordinated national system for retirement security, survivor protection, disability, family and medical leave, and employment injury.

The framework uses one coordinated record, one entry point, one primary caseworker or responsible contact, and one appeal path across its branches.

Where responsibility overlaps, government programs and responsible private entities reconcile costs internally. The individual is not required to determine which agency, employer, insurer, contractor, or funding entity ultimately owes a particular cost before receiving protection.

Medical questions remain medical questions. Qualified medical professionals make medical determinations rather than employers or nonmedical benefit administrators. Administrative requirements must remain understandable, accessible, reviewable, and no more burdensome than reasonably necessary.

HP-13 does not propose one benefit that erases every distinction between these programs. It proposes one coordinated framework containing distinct protections, with the ability to move from one form of protection to another when circumstances change.

Retirement & Survivor Protection

HP-13 proposes preserving Social Security’s earned, progressive retirement structure while establishing a guaranteed retirement floor beneath it. The public system provides the foundation. Personal savings, pensions, investments, property, and other private resources remain the individual’s own and do not reduce the federal retirement guarantee.

A Guaranteed Retirement Floor

Every eligible retired person would receive federal retirement income no lower than the living-wage standard established under HP-09, converted to an appropriate monthly retirement amount. For a married two-adult household, the combined guarantee would equal 150 percent of the single-person retirement floor. The retirement floor would be reviewed annually alongside HP-09.

The retirement floor is not means-tested. Private pensions, employer retirement plans, IRAs, annuities, savings, investments, property, and other personal resources would not reduce or disqualify a person’s federal retirement benefit.

The public system guarantees a dignified foundation. It does not place a ceiling over the life a person built above it.

Earned Benefits Still Matter

HP-13 retains Social Security’s basic earnings-history structure. If an earned benefit falls below the applicable retirement floor, the system supplements it to the floor. If the earned benefit exceeds the floor, the person receives the higher earned benefit. If an eligible person has no earned federal retirement benefit, the retirement floor applies. Flexible claiming ages, actuarial adjustment for early retirement, and delayed-retirement credits remain available.

Unpaid Caregiving

When someone substantially reduces or leaves paid employment to provide necessary unpaid care to a spouse, HP-13 proposes crediting that period toward the caregiver’s own retirement record. Where reliable earnings history exists, the credit reflects indexed pre-caregiving earnings. Otherwise, comparable paid-caregiving earnings provide the reference point. The credit belongs to the caregiver and remains with that person following divorce or the spouse’s death.

Disability at Retirement Age

Reaching retirement age does not make a qualifying disability disappear. A person qualifying for both National Disability and retirement protection receives the higher applicable protection while the qualifying disability and protected earnings loss continue.

Survivor Protection

HP-13 compares a surviving spouse’s earned federal retirement benefit with the deceased spouse’s applicable earned benefit. The survivor receives the higher of the two, rather than both, and remains protected by the applicable single-person retirement floor. Remarriage does not automatically erase an existing survivor entitlement. Multiple survivor benefits cannot be stacked.

Eligible surviving children receive separate child-survivor protection under the proposal, including extended protection for qualifying full-time undergraduate students and continuing protection for qualifying disabled surviving children.

Protected Federal Benefit

HP-13 also establishes specific protections governing garnishment of the federal retirement benefit and retirement-floor supplement. These protections apply to the HP-13 federal benefit itself and do not convert private pensions, IRAs, annuities, employer plans, or other personal assets into federally protected HP-13 benefits.

National Disability

Disability is not always absolute. HP-13 therefore proposes protection for total, partial, progressive, recurring, and permanent loss of earning capacity.

The central question is not simply whether someone can perform some work. It is: What earning capacity has actually been lost, and what can reasonably be restored?

Protection Based on Earning Capacity

For permanent disability, HP-13 protects 100 percent of the verified earnings gap between protected pre-disability earnings and actual post-disability earning capacity. As earning capacity is restored, the protected gap decreases. When realistic earning capacity is fully restored to the protected level, the earnings-gap benefit ends.

Work should reduce the loss, not eliminate the protection.

Capacity Must Be Real

Actual post-disability earnings are the default measure of earning capacity. Greater earning capacity may be imputed only with clear medical, vocational, and labor-market evidence and after practical assistance such as rehabilitation, training, accommodations, placement, and employment services where appropriate. A theoretical job does not become someone’s income simply because it exists on paper.

Capacity must be real, not hypothetical.

Recovery and Rehabilitation

Where improvement is reasonably possible, treatment, rehabilitation, accommodation, occupational therapy, vocational services, retraining, and employment assistance form part of the path toward restored independence and earning capacity. HP-13 recognizes both full recovery and permanent-condition completion. Finishing treatment does not necessarily mean the person has fully recovered.

Permanent Disability

Medical permanence is determined by the treating medical practitioner. Qualified occupational or vocational professionals then evaluate remaining employment limitations, accommodations, rehabilitation opportunities, and realistic retraining. HP-13 protects the career that was lost, not merely a generic wage floor. Pre-disability earnings, experience, qualifications, career progression, and realistic future earning capacity are part of the evaluation.

Returning to Work

Return to work should not operate as a trapdoor. Trial work, rehabilitation, accommodations, and changing earning capacity are coordinated so that a genuine attempt to return does not automatically erase disability protection. Recurring or progressive conditions remain connected to the original condition rather than forcing the person to repeatedly begin the process again.

Medical Independence

Disputed medical questions are decided by qualified medical professionals. Agency clinicians may review medical evidence and disagree with a treating professional, but disagreement must be medically supported and explained. Complex cases may use coordinated interdisciplinary teams.

Family & Medical Leave

HP-13 proposes national paid, job-protected Family and Medical Leave for qualifying personal, family, safety, military, bereavement, and public-health circumstances.

Protection From the First Day

Eligibility and job protection begin on the worker’s official hire date. Part-time workers receive the same legal protection, with wage replacement based on actual documented earnings. Gig and self-employed workers receive economic protection based on verified prior earnings, although conventional job restoration cannot apply where no employment position exists. States and local governments may provide greater protection but may not reduce the federal floor.

Replace What Was Actually Lost

Qualifying leave replaces 100 percent of verified ordinary earnings actually lost during approved leave. The normal calculation uses the previous 12 months of ordinary earnings and accounts for multiple jobs, recurring overtime, and recurring variable compensation. Hours actually worked continue to be paid normally. Total compensation cannot exceed 100 percent of the protected earnings lost.

Pregnancy and Parenthood

HP-13 proposes an eight-week medical baseline for uncomplicated pregnancy, birth, and recovery, with medically necessary extensions. Each legal parent receives 16 weeks of individual bonding leave during the first year following birth, adoption, foster placement, legal guardianship, or recognized intended-parent status. Surrogates receive the same pregnancy, childbirth, recovery, pregnancy-loss, privacy, employment, and medically necessary extension protections as other pregnant workers.

Personal Medical Leave

Workers receive 12 weeks of personal medical leave in a rolling 12-month period, with medically necessary extensions and end-of-period transition review. When a temporary medical condition becomes a longer-term loss of earning capacity, the system can transition the person into National Disability rather than ending protection at an arbitrary boundary.

Family Caregiving

Workers receive 12 weeks in a rolling 12-month period for qualifying family caregiving, with extensions available for severe circumstances. HP-13 uses a broad functional definition of family that includes conventional legal relationships as well as relationships substantially equivalent to family involving genuine caregiving or family responsibility.

Safety Leave

A separate six-week paid, job-protected entitlement covers qualifying practical safety and escape needs associated with domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, trafficking, or credible threats. Medical or trauma treatment associated with those circumstances is handled through the appropriate medical or caregiving protection.

Military Families and Bereavement

HP-13 establishes specific protections for deployment, return, reassignment, relocation, military caregiving, casualties, missing-in-action circumstances, and military bereavement. General bereavement provides three weeks of paid, job-protected leave, with additional time available for specified circumstances requiring further attention.

Public-Health Emergencies

Rather than establishing a permanent generic emergency-leave category, HP-13 allows a declared public-health emergency to activate temporary protections tailored to the actual circumstances and sunset when the emergency ends.

Protection While the System Decides

Unexpected qualifying leave receives provisional job protection immediately. The administering agency has 14 calendar days to verify eligibility. Approved benefits continue while timely review and appeal are pending, subject to the proposal’s fraud and eligibility safeguards.

Administrative uncertainty should not become personal catastrophe.

Employment-Injury Protection

HP-13 proposes national protection for sudden accidents, cumulative trauma, repetitive-motion injuries, occupational disease, toxic exposure, hearing loss, and other employment-related injuries and illnesses. Coverage applies when employment materially caused, contributed to, accelerated, or aggravated the condition. A gradual injury does not need an artificial single accident date to be recognized.

Wage Protection

Temporary wage replacement covers legal earnings actually lost because of the employment injury, including concurrent employment. Eligibility begins when the treating medical professional determines that the condition prevents all or part of the person’s work. Medical judgment determines restrictions, reassessment, and expected recovery rather than a fixed administrative timetable.

Full Healthcare Coverage

All medically necessary care arising from a covered employment injury, illness, exposure, recurrence, rehabilitation need, or complication is paid through the Universal Healthcare proposal Forthcoming, the national employment-injury fund, or coordinated reimbursement between them. No deductible, copayment, coinsurance, balance bill, lien, repayment demand, or other medical cost is shifted to the worker except where deliberate fraud is established under the proposal’s procedural safeguards.

The injury happened at work. The medical bill should not follow the worker home.

Independent Medical Care

The worker chooses a qualified medical professional participating in the universal healthcare system. Employers, insurers, contractors, staffing agencies, and other financially interested parties do not select or direct the professional determining treatment, benefit eligibility, functional capacity, or return-to-work status. Legitimate second opinions are arranged through neutral administration using conflict-free medical review.

Preexisting Conditions

Relevant preexisting conditions do not automatically erase protection. Medical disclosure is limited to diagnosed conditions materially relevant to safe performance of essential job duties and associated restrictions or accommodations. Where responsibility is disputed, HP-13 distinguishes among knowingly concealed limitations, employer knowledge, and risks knowingly accepted by both parties. Regardless of ultimate fault allocation, the worker continues to receive healthcare and income protection while responsibility is determined.

Safe Return to Work

Return-to-work decisions compare medically established functional abilities and restrictions with the actual essential duties of the job. Reasonable accommodation, modified duties, or medically approved schedules may support a safe return. Where suitable employment cannot restore earning capacity, the person transitions directly into National Disability without a new application, waiting period, or interruption in protection.

Responsibility Through Contracting Layers

HP-13 assigns ultimate responsibility according to the entities that funded, authorized, or economically benefited from the work. Contractors, staffing arrangements, franchises, subsidiaries, and other legitimate business structures may continue to exist, but those structures cannot make lawful responsibility disappear. The worker reports the injury and the employment information reasonably known. The administering system traces the contractual and financial relationships.

Safety and Prevention

Employer contributions reflect payroll, occupational risk, verified safety performance, claims experience, rehabilitation outcomes, and system solvency. The proposal also establishes protected worker safety reporting and safeguards against retaliation, claim suppression, misclassification, deliberate underreporting, and manipulation.

Protect first. Reconcile responsibility afterward.

Administration & Appeals

The four branches operate through a coordinated administrative structure. HP-13 proposes one record, one primary responsible contact, coordinated medical and vocational expertise, accessible applications, minimum necessary disclosure, and a unified appeal structure.

Administrative staffing shortages do not constitute grounds for reducing otherwise eligible protection. Medical questions remain with qualified medical professionals. Financial and institutional disputes remain primarily between the institutions responsible for resolving them. The person receiving protection should not become the clearinghouse for government administration.

Transition & Implementation

HP-13 is a proposal for structural reform, not an assertion that an integrated national system can be created instantaneously.

Implementation would require statutory development, actuarial modeling, administrative capacity, data governance, federal-state coordination, funding transitions, medical-privacy safeguards, workforce preparation, and coordination with other Human Party proposals.

Existing beneficiaries and people already receiving protection would require defined transition rules designed to prevent interruption or inadvertent loss of lawful benefits. Specific implementation schedules and technical rules remain subject to legislative development, further research, actuarial analysis, and continued review.

Testing & Review

HP-13 has undergone separate stress testing of its National Disability provisions, Family and Medical Leave framework, and integrated policy architecture. Those reviews examined practical scenarios, internal coordination, existing program comparisons, and the Human Party’s governing policy questions.

The reviews also identified implementation dependencies and matters requiring further development, including actuarial modeling, statutory drafting, data governance, medical-privacy safeguards, administrative capacity, and federal-state coordination.

The stress-test reports are provided below so readers can examine the methodology and findings directly.

Research & Documents

The public record below separates the current controlling proposal from its detailed annex, supporting research and review, and superseded historical drafts.

Current Policy

Controlling Annex

Research, Testing & Supporting Work

Historical Archive

Related Policies

Web presentation of the proposal. The controlled downloadable document governs if formatting or transcription differs.