Unions & Kay Tillow

Kay Tillow keeps plugging away - I get an email from her a couple times a week saying that this or that union has joined the movement and endorsed HR 676, Rep. John Conyers' bill that would create an American single-payer healthcare system by expanding an improved Medicare system.

Four hundred and twenty union organizations in 48 states have endorsed it, including 107 Central Labor Councils and Area Labor Federations and 33 state AFL-CIOs (in the order in which they endorsed: KY, PA, CT, OH, DE, ND, WA, SC, WY, VT, FL, WI, WV, SD, NC, MO, MN, ME, AR, MD-DC, TX, IA, AZ, TN, OR, GA, OK, KS, CO, IN, AL, CA & AK).

Today Kay's email reads:

IBT, APWU Locals and Building Trades Council Endorse HR 676

Teamster and Postal worker local unions and another building trades council have all endorsed HR 676, single payer healthcare legislation introduced by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI).

In New York City, Teamster Local 805 (IBT) has endorsed HR 676, reports Local President Sandy Pope.

In Medford, Oregon, the Southern Oregon Area Local of the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) has also endorsed the Conyers legislation.

In San Diego, California, the San Diego Building and Construction Trades Council unanimously endorsed HR 676, reports Council President Tom Lemmon.

#30#

So how improved would this "improved" Medicare be? Sounds pretty good. As Kay puts it, HR 676 would cover every person in the U. S. 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), vision care, chiropractic and long term care.

HR 676 ends deductibles and co-payments. HR 676 would save billions annually by eliminating the high overhead and profits of the private health insurance industry and HMOs. The resolution currently has 90 co-sponsors in addition to Conyers. Co-sponsors and bill text are at the Library of Congress's "Thomas."

Moyers covers the Cal Nurses

Take a look at this great segment from Bill Moyers' Journal, at PBS.

It brings back my favorite observation from T.R. Reid's "Sick Around the World" special: the fact that we in the U.S. don't have a health care system, we have a market. In the same way that sprawl isn't city planning. It's what happens when there isn't city planning.

UAW President Calls for Single-Payer

Crains Cleveland Business reports that United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger in a speech at the City Club of Cleveland urged the country to adopt a single-payer health care system.

Gettelfinger, president of the 640,000-member union since 2002, said the health care crisis, the lack of a national industrial policy and the need for improved trade agreements are at the top of his agenda.

“We believe health care should be a right, not a privilege for those who can afford it,” he said.

More Unions for Single-Payer

Kay Tillow of Unions for Single-Payer HR676 has an inspiring steadiness of purpose. She's like Elinor Christiansen, MD, of Health Care for All Colorado in that she's been at this for decades. Most of us would throw our hands up at some point, buy a sailboat and head for Bali. Enough!

Not Kay or Elinor.

I get Kay's email blasts a couple times a week -- about big news, like the Executive Council of the California AFL-CIO unanimously endorsing HR 676, (With 2.1 million plus members the CA Federation is the largest state affiliate of the AFL-CIO.)

California was the thirty-second state to endorse HR676 -- Alabama was the 31st a couple weeks ago.

Kay also emails about local steps, like these endorsers of HR676:

• In Charleston, SC, Local 502, Coastal Carolina Association of Professional Musicians voted to endorse HR676,
• In El Segundo, CA, the Executive Board of Transport Workers Union Local 564 voted to endorse HR676,
• In Louisville, KY, the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) voted to endorse, and
• In San Francisco, CA, the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific voted to endorse.

HR 676 would bring universal health care to the U.S. through a single-payer financing mechanism, a bit like a greatly improved Medicare for all.

It would cover 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), vision care, chiropractic and long term care. HR 676 ends deductibles and co-payments. It would save billions annually by eliminating the high overhead and profits of the private health insurance industry and HMOs.

HR 676 currently has 87 co-sponsors in addition to Conyers.

Faculty Unions Endorse Single-Payer

Unions for Single-Payer reports that college faculty unions in three states have endorsed HR 676, the legislation that would institute a single payer system in the U.S. introduced by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI).

In Anchorage, Alaska, the Representative Assembly of Local 4996, United Academics-AAUP/AFT, endorsed HR 676. The local represents 950 faculty members on the three major campuses of the University of Alaska system. In New York, Local 3998, Long Island University Faculty Federation, NYSUT/AFT, has endorsed HR 676. In Philadelphia, AFT Local 2026 endorsed HR 676. Local 2026 represents 1,300 faculty and staff at the Community College of Philadelphia.

GM offers buyout; new workers will get less

The Detroit News reported Friday that GM is offering an early retirement package to about two-thirds of its work force and suggesting production cut-backs and plant closures. That's 46,000 blue-collar workers, on top of 34,000 since 2006. It would open positions for new employees who will receive lower wages and reduced health benefits.

The bulk of savings from the new, four-year contract won't kick in until 2010. That's when GM expects a key piece of the deal -- a fund that allows GM to pay a reduced rate to turn over $50 billion in retiree health care costs to the union -- will be implemented.

Indiana 30th state AFL-CIO to endorse HR 676

This from Kay Tillow at Unions for Single-Payer:

At its December convention, the Indiana AFL-CIO became the 30th state federation to endorse HR 676, single payer healthcare legislation introduced by Congressman John Conyers (D-Michigan). The Indiana AFL-CIO represents 320,000 union members and retirees.

Endorsement resolutions were submitted to the convention by the Northwest Indiana Federation of Labor in Hammond and the White River Central Labor Council in Bloomington.

Steven E. Henderson, Staff Representative for the Indiana AFL-CIO, said of the endorsement of HR 676: “Starting in the mid-to-late 1980s, health care has been the number one issue in collective bargaining. We cannot, this time, allow the Insurance-Medical Complex to buy our legislators and congress to kill this needed law.”

Henderson noted that in the early 1990s many thought that Americans were not yet ready to accept a single payer system despite a report by the GAO that showed the effectiveness of single payer health care. “The State AFL-CIO now thinks that we are at that point, the single payer system is the only solution,” concluded Henderson.

Businesses think about national healthcare

This story on businesses speaking out for government involvement in healthcare ran in a dozen or more Southern papers, leading with: "Many executives of large companies are starting to call for a national approach to fixing health care, warning that an employer-subsidized health system is unsustainable."

“Five years from now this problem will have to be cured, or the competitiveness of the United States will be dramatically affected,” said J. Randall MacDonald, senior vice president for human resources at I.B.M. He called for a national debate on such topics as maintaining existing employer-subsidized health care, with “some level of umbrella coverage over that, some level of a single payer system.”

“A lot of positioning is going on now,” he said. “The reality is that changes are inevitable, I think sooner rather than later.”

..."“The way it’s going, there will be 75 million uninsured in another 10 years,” said James D. Sinegal, chief executive of Costco Wholesale, which subsidizes health care for 81,000 of its 100,000 workers in the United States. “The federal government has to lend some assistance.”

...“The system is going to break,” warned Carl T. Camden, president and chief executive of Kelly Services. “You can only put so many uninsured people through the emergency rooms before employers stop offering coverage.”

...Economists say that employers would raise wages if they did not have to pay for employee health care. The Treasury would stand to gain $140 billion a year in personal income taxes if the benefits were treated as wages, said Len Burman, director of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center in Washington. There would be about $70 billion more in additional payroll taxes due on those wages, he said.

The story does a good job of delineating the differences between business sectors — including those who don't want more government involvement: "Craig R. Barrett, the chairman of Intel, another participant in the Better Health Care Together campaign, is skeptical about a new government role. He said the private sector could do the best job at improving efficiency in the system."

Plus a reason some small businesses might not want single-payer: "Another set of issues divides large companies from small businesses, which employ 50 percent of working Americans. Their owners worry that in some states they may be forced to spend for coverage of young workers with little interest in health coverage."

Right. All those young workers who don't want it. Until they need it.

In the meantime, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger called for "single-payer, universal, comprehensive national health care" at the union's bargaining convention last week in Detroit.

People's Weekly World Newspaper quoted Local 900 delegate Dwayne Walker, who said health care “was an issue that should have been dealt with a long time ago — we need national health care. We are all part of a community and the union looks out not only for its members but for the rest of the county too.”

Wal-Mart & the SEIU hold hands

Now Wal-Mart and the SEIU have joined together in a coalition for universal healthcare.

Somehow I trust this odd couple more than Families USA and Heritage Foundation. That’s even though I'm proud to still be able to say I’ve never shopped at Wal-Mart.

Nina Owrcharenko of the Heritage Foundation and Kathleen Stoll of Families USA spoke to Colorado’s Blue Ribbon Commission for Health Care Reform a couple weeks ago, explaining “how can strongly held ideological differences be bridged in order to produce consensus on a comprehensive reform plan.”

The answer? It's actually pretty obvious. You just give everyone more of the same. Expand current programs (until the next round of budget cuts) and expand tax credits.

Now there’s a sustainable solution.

Next question: What industry has even more hard-to-remember acronyms than the military? Right. Healthcare policy. So even though the Families USA plan is actually the Health Coverage Coalition for the Uninsured’s plan, and is signed on to by 16 major groups — including Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Kaiser Permanente, Pfizer and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — let’s just call it the Families USA plan. Or the Give Everyone More Plan.

The Wal-Mart/SEIU plan (aka the Businesses Can't Do It All Plan) also includes other heavy hitters: AT&T, the Communication Workers of America, Intel, Kelly Services, the Center for American Progress,

Other unions’ leaders have criticized Service Employees International Union’s president, Andy Stern, for holding hands with Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott.

They’ve got a good point. Here’s Press Associates take on Walmart: "...the nation's largest private employer--is known for its expensive health care coverage, skimpy wages, labor law-breaking, mistreatment of workers and the fact that it forces 46 percent of its workers and their families into publicly paid health care programs."

(Now you won’t read that in the “mainstream liberal media.” Not a lot of union coverage there. Hmmm...)

Then again, Jeanne Lambrew (of the Center for American Progress) also has a good point, here with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!: “Lee Scott said himself in the discussions the other day, he is the head of the largest company in the world, yet this problem is bigger than Wal-Mart.”

Goodman quotes Wal-Mart critics: ““If Wal-Mart is truly serious about universal healthcare, we challenge it to provide universal healthcare to all of its uninsured employees and make universal healthcare a litmus test for its political contributions. We await their answer.”

Lambrew replied that “we, in the US, are fairly unique, in that we have this expectation that goes back decades that our employers will do what government has failed to do, which is to provide affordable access to health benefits. The truth is, the unions -- AFL, SEIU before, when it was part of it -- were really instrumental in making that happen. …. So employers should do the best they can for their employees, and it's a necessary part of the system, but it's not sufficient. We need to kind of build on what we have today, but also create new systems for the people who can't access employer-based coverage.”

As incoherent as that was, this plan is easier to like than the Families USA plan. Sure that's at least partly because there aren’t any specifics out on the Wal-Mart/SEIU plan. Just this statement:

America's health care system is broken. The traditional employer-based model of coverage in its current form is endangered without substantial reform to our health care system. It is being crushed by out of control costs, the pressures of the global economy , and the large and growing number of uninsured. Soaring health costs threaten workers' livelihoods and companies' competitiveness, and undermine the security that individuals of a prosperous nation should enjoy. We can only solve these problems – and deliver health care that is high quality, affordable, accessible and secure – if business, government, labor, the health care delivery system and the nonprofit sector work together.

And these four principles:

1. We believe every person in America must have quality, affordable health insurance coverage;

2. We believe individuals have a responsibility to maintain and protect their health;

3. We believe that America must dramatically improve the value it receives for every health care dollar; and,

4. We believe that businesses, governments, and individuals all should contribute to managing and financing a new American health care system.

That’s not bad.

Especially with Stern saying, "We can't keep tinkering, hoping that incremental change will fix our broken health care system. We need fundamental change, and it is going to take new thinking, leadership, new partnerships, some risk taking, and compromising to make it happen. But that is what we all owe our country."

That's actually far better than Lambrew's "We need to kind of build on what we have today, but also create new systems for the people who can't access employer-based coverage."

Send her back to D.C. with Stoll, where Owrcharenko can tutor the two on Ivory Think Tank rationals for allowing the insurance industry to continue to wreak havoc on us all.

Which side are you on, girls? Which side are you on?

If you had a choice...

This from Mike Konopacki, with his permission. Konopacki and Gary Huck are authors of Bye! American, Mad in USA, Two Headed Space Alien Shrinks Labor Movement, Working Class Hero, and Them.

My editor in Portland has a framed aphorism on his wall: "Organized Labor: the folks who invented the weekend."

Americans turn away from organized labor at our peril. Unions are another way of spelling middle-class and American values. Here's what the Catholics say:

The Principle of Participation.
"We believe people have a right and a duty to participate in society, seeking together the common good and well-being of all, especially the poor and vulnerable..."

Without participation, the benefits available to an individual through any social institution cannot be realized. The human person has a right not to be shut out from participating in those institutions that are necessary for human fulfillment.

This principle applies in a special way to conditions associated with work. "Work is more than a way to make a living; it is a form of continuing participation in God's creation. If the dignity of work is to be protected, then the basic rights of workers must be respected--the right to productive work, to decent and fair wages, to organize and join unions, to private property, and to economic initiative"

That's from Jesuit Father William Byron's article in America, on the "Ten Building Blocks of Catholic Social Teaching." He in turn drew from Sharing Catholic Social Teaching: Challenges and Directions--Reflections of the U.S. Catholic Bishops, p. 5.