America’s health insurance crisis, something that affects every working family, proved a prime topic during the AFL-CIO Maritime Trades Department executive board meeting Feb. 24-25 in San Diego. With health care costs easily rising much faster than incomes each year, it’s a crisis that in the long run threatens to cripple the U.S. economy.
Among other efforts related to curbing health care costs and securing coverage for the tens of millions of Americans currently with no health insurance at all, the AFL-CIO is fighting back through a recently launched state-by-state grassroots campaign. The federation also is offering resistance through its support of the newly formed coalition America’s Agenda, headed by retired UFCW President Doug Dority.
MTD and SIU President Michael Sacco described the health care crisis as one “that’s not going away. In fact, it’s getting worse. If you’ve negotiated a contract lately—or for that matter, if you’ve gone to the doctor— you know exactly what I mean.”
Dority echoed and expanded upon those sentiments. “Every (union) president that I’ve talked to since we set up this foundation has told me that their number one domestic issue is health care— how to pay for the health care when it’s increasing at double digit inflation every year,” Dority said. “It’s something that the employers also have to address, and these are not bad employers that just want to put extra money in their pockets.”
He pointed out that America’s Agenda, which includes prominent individuals and organizations from the medical community, is pushing for what is called “universal coverage” throughout the country. “You can’t solve the health and welfare problem at the bargaining table,” Dority insisted. “So we’ve developed a strategy to go out and [campaign in] some more progressive sates. They include Illinois and Massachusetts, and now we’ve reached into Maine and Vermont—all of which are moving to have universal health care in their state.
“If we can get it in the state, then the federal government at some point will reach out and wrap their arms around this (by adopting a similar program). It can be done.”
For instance, he reminded the audience that Medicare originally was a state-level program eventually duplicated by the federal government.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney noted that the federation last year launched grassroots campaigns at the state level ultimately aimed at securing good, affordable coverage for all.
“We need a simple national health care plan that covers everybody,” he said. “If they won’t give us a fair health plan covering all families in all 50 states, we’ll give them hell in all 50 states.”
U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) reminded everyone that health insurance was a big factor as U.S. auto manufacturers recently announced the layoffs of “not hundreds, not thousands but tens of thousands” of unionized workers. That’s despite the fact that labor, management and government alike all agree that today’s workers are more productive than ever.
“If you’re more productive, you’re supposed to be sharing in the fruit of that production, but we’re not,” Abercrombie said. “We’ve got to band together. And if the American labor movement cannot do it, who is going to do it?”
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