No union can bargain without facing a demand or hard choices on health care coverage in our contracts. The absence of a national health care system significantly depresses our members' wages despite the productivity gains their work produces. 

March 9, 2010 - Members of the Pennsylvania Federation joined thousands of union members, community activists, religious leaders and others performing a citizens' arrest of the insurance companies as they were meeting in Washington, DC to plot to kill health reform. The boisterous, energetic, diverse crowd marched from the AFL-CIO and AFSCME buildings and DuPont Circle to the sound of beating drums and shouted slogans like, “Blocking health care is a crime” and “Health care can’t wait.” The crowd was so large, it completely encircled the block-long Ritz-Carlton hotel in Washington, D.C., where the front group for the nation’s biggest insurance companies, the America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) is meeting. Health Care for America NOW (HCAN) sponsored the rally and march.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka laid it on the line, telling the crowd: "The insurance companies won’t stop unless we stop them—and we do that by passing health care reform legislation. So today we’re here to put the insurance companies on notice: We will not allow you and your lobbyists to bully Congress into not acting. Not on health care or any of the issues important to America’s working families."

The crowd placed a crime scene tape around the hotel and several leaders and victims of health insurance abuse delivered a “warrant” to the front of the hotel calling for the arrest of the insurance company executives.

We need reform, we need it now, and we won't let their lobbyists or their money stop Congress from passing it. We will fight, and we will win.

January 14, 2010 – Despite the so-called agreement announced today by various labor organizations, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) reiterated its opposition to any health care reform legislation that is funded by taxing the value of workers’ existing health care benefits. Read More...

January 14, 2010 - Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) initiated a letter to the Senate Majority Leader and Speaker of the House concerning the proposed Senate healthcare excise tax. The good Senator's request for co-signers was met by several reasonable thinking Senate leaders, including both Maryland Senators, New Jersey's senior Senator, Senators from Illinois, New York, Vermont, and others. Make sure you thank your Senator for supporting this important issue. Or share your disappointment in your Senator's failure to support the middle class and workers. Read Senator Sherrod Brown's letter here.

January 11, 2010 BMWED President Simpson writes House Speaker Pelosi about the potential defection of BMWED members from the Democratic party if our so-called "Cadillac" health plans are taxed. Read President Simpson's letter here.

October 28, 2009 Teamster President Hoffa's letter to the Senate regarding excise tax on insurance companies who offer comprehensive plans to workers. This notion of taxing health benefits will impact workers, resulting in insurance providers passing on the cost to our members. Read President Hoffa's leter here.

June 16, 2009 BMWED President Simpson writes President Obama in connection with a proposed tax on employer provided healthcare benefits, asking for a veto of any legislation that taxes our benefits. Read President Simpson's letter here.

BMWED correspondence which clearly address the dangers of taxing our healthcare benefits. View a printable version here.

President Obama has created a unique opportunity to transform the health system.  Health care consumers, women and public health advocates know we need an Equitable, Quality, Universal, Affordable health system.  But special interests in D.C. have other ideas.  Sign up to let the President and Congress know we need a publicly financed, publicly administered plan like Medicare.  We'll send the message to them by April 6, when the White House health care forum convenes in Los Angeles. Support this message by linking to the Center for Policy Analysis site and signing the on-line petition. Ask your friends and colleagues to sign too!

Labor Campaign for Single-Payer Healthcare

Healthcare Is A Right -- Not A Privilege

January 16, 2009 St. Louis – More than 150 union leaders from 31 states gathered in St. Louis last weekend to step up a grassroots campaign to enact comprehensive national healthcare reform.  The group is promoting a single-payer plan, which would work like an improved and expanded Medicare program to cover everyone. The national kick-off meeting was convened by Labor for Single-Payer Healthcare, a campaign spearheaded by scores of trade union organizations.  

The national single-payer bill, HR 676 – expected to be reintroduced in Congress later this month – has been endorsed by 39 state AFL-CIO federations, 100 Central Labor Councils, and more than 400 local unions. The bill has 92 co-sponsors in Congress, more than any other health care reform bill.

For more information visit the Labor For Single Payer web site

Labor's "Medicare for All" Advocates Test Strength
Mischa Gaus, Labor Notes - Yet some major unions that have endorsed single payer, including AFSCME and the Service Employees, in practice are backing plans that would preserve private insurers. Both union federations, the AFL-CIO and Change to Win, already have lined up behind compromise plans....Read More

First-of-Its Kind Study:

Single-Payer Reform Would Be Major Stimulus for Economy

2.6 Million New Jobs, $317 Billion in Business Revenue, $100 Billion in Wages

Establishing a national single-payer style healthcare reform system would provide a major stimulus for the U.S. economy by creating 2.6 million new jobs, and infusing $317 billion in new business and public revenues, with another $100 billion in wages into the U.S. economy, according to the findings of a groundbreaking study released today.

The number of jobs created by a single-payer system, expanding and upgrading Medicare to cover everyone, parallels almost exactly the total job loss in 2008.

“These dramatic new findings document for the first time that a single-payer system could not only solve our healthcare crisis, but also substantially contribute to putting America back to work and assisting the economic recovery,” said Geri Jenkins, RN, co-president of the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association, which sponsored the study. read more....

H.R.676

Thirteen years ago Bill Clinton became president partly because he promised to do something about rising health care costs. Although Clinton's chances of reforming the US health care system may have looked good at first, the effort soon ran aground. Since then a combination of factors have kept health care off the top of our nation’s agenda. Like the general distraction of a nation focused first on the gloriousness of getting rich, then on terrorism, now on war and occupation.

Also impeding healthcare for all is the unwillingness of our politicians to confront the insurance lobbies whom so successfully frustrated the Clinton effort. Except for Congressman John Conyers, Jr., of Michigan's 14th District.

Congressman John Conyers has sponsored “The United States National Health Insurance Act, (H.R. 676)”, and on August 8, 2007 the Pennsylvania Federation proudly adopted Resolution Nineteen endorsing a national single payer health care system in general and H.R. 676 in particular, urging the union to fight for its creation.

If passed, H.R.676 would cover every person in the United States for all necessary medical care including prescription drugs, hospital, surgical, outpatient services, primary and preventive care, emergency services, dental, mental health, home health, physical therapy, rehabilitation (including for substance abuse), visioncare, chiropractic and long term care. H.R.676 ends deductibles and co-payments.  H.R.676 would save billions annually by eliminating the high overhead and profits of the private health insurance industry and HMOs.

“The union movement must marshal its resources for a renewed all-out assault to end the current health care crisis.... There is no institution in America better suited or better able to take on this task.” AFL-CIO Executive Council statement, August 2002

It is important for our members to educate themselves on how the passage of this bill will not only enrich the lives of the working class, but also benefit America as a nation. When candidates ask for our vote, intelligently ask them how they are going to address America’s healthcare crisis. And if they don't have a plan, we can tell them ours; H.R.676.

Ask yourself why 15,000 of our nations doctors and medical professionals have formed Physicians for a National Health Program? PNHP is the only national physician organization in the United States dedicated exclusively to implementing a single-payer national health program.

GuaranteedHealthcare.org, a project of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee is a leading national advocate for universal healthcare reform, through a single-payer style system based on an improved and expanded Medicare for all. One of the fastest growing health care organizations in the U.S., presently having 75,000 members in all 50 states, representing nurses at scores of hospitals, clinics, and home health agencies.

Also visit H.R. 676.org, The Citizens Alliance for National Health Insurance and Unions For Single Payer H.R.676.

Something Stinks with our American HealthCare System

While some Americans have health insurance through their employers, employment is no longer a guarantee of health insurance coverage. As America continues to move from a manufacturing based economy to a service economy, and employee-working patterns continue to evolve, health insurance coverage in the United States has become less stable. The service sector offers less access to health insurance than its manufacturing counterparts. Further, an increasing reliance on part-time and contract workers who are not eligible for coverage means fewer workers have access to employer-sponsored health insurance.

Due to rising health insurance premiums, many small American employers cannot afford to offer health benefits. Companies that do offer health insurance often require employees to contribute a larger share toward their coverage. As a result, an increasing number of Americans have opted not to take advantage of job-based health insurance because they cannot afford it, effectively denying them coverage. The number of these working poor combined with the over 50 million Americans who have absolutely no healthcare coverage at all creates a healthcare crisis in America.

The United States has by far the most expensive health care system in the world, both on a per-capita basis and as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product. This high price tag is attributed to the rising costs of medical technology and prescription drugs and the enormous administrative costs resulting from the complex multiple payer system. The huge gap in administrative costs between the U.S. and other nation’s single-payer systems arise from their differing mechanisms of paying for health care.  While other nations, such as Canada and Germany, have a single insurance plan, or “single-payer”, where each province pays the bills for everyone, the U.S. has a complex and fragmented payment structure built around thousands of different insurance plans, each with its own regulations on coverage, eligibility, and documentation.

The U.S. wastes more on health care bureaucracy than it would cost to provide health care to all of the uninsured. A single payer national health insurance system could garner these massive administrative savings, allowing universal coverage without any increase in total health spending.

Take a minute to watch this video, brought to you by our union friends across the northern border, the CWA-Canada*. Send this link to family and friends. America is in a healthcare crisis and it stinks.

*In 2007, CWA|SCA Canada became the new name of the country's oldest media union. Formerly known as TNG Canada/CWA, their new moniker contains bilingual initials (SCA stands for Syndicat des communications d’Amérique) and reflects their elevated, autonomous position within the Communications Workers of America.

Senator Barack Obama on Healthcare

During the Presidential debate last night Barack Obama firmly communicated why he thinks healthcare is not a privilege but a right. Citing a difficult moment in his own life, Obama spoke of his mother who, when diagnosed with cancer, found herself fighting her insurance company to prove her sickness was not a "pre-existing condition." "In a country as wealthy as ours," Obama said, "for us to have people who are going bankrupt because they can't pay their medical bills...there's something fundamentally wrong with that." ...read more

Wonder Why The Cost of Health Care Is So High?

MINNEAPOLIS -- William McGuire is going to be OK, according to this Associated Press report. UnitedHealth Group Inc. will pay its departing chief $5.1 million a year for the rest of his life and a $6.5 million lump sum, according to a calculation of his severance benefits by The Corporate Library, a watchdog group that has criticized McGuire's pay before.

He also has stock options that were worth $1.78 billion as of the end of 2005.

McGuire has agreed to retire by Dec. 1, and he stepped down as chairman Sunday. The move came after a company-sponsored investigation determined that many company stock options were backdated to make them more favorable for recipients, including McGuire, other executives and thousands of UnitedHealth employees.

McGuire's 1999 employment contract, which has been amended since then, has been criticized as too generous, but the severance provisions came into sharper focus on Monday now that he is leaving.

In mid-April, McGuire asked the company's board to stop issuing new stock options to him and some other senior managers, to cap an executive retirement plan and to get rid of noncash perks. The company said in May that those changes had been adopted, although no amendments to McGuire's employment agreement were filed. Company spokesman Mark Lindsay did not return phone messages.

McGuire's base salary was $2.3 million a year, but he cleared more than $100 million in years that he cashed in stock options.

On Sunday, UnitedHealth said McGuire would reprice his options to the highest point in the year they were granted.

(The preceding Associated Press report was published by the Chicago Tribune on Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2006.)

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