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Minnesota Rally Highlights Dire State of U.S. Health Care |
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Yesterday, shareholders of UnitedHealth Group Inc. heard from company executives that the firm was in tip-top-health. In 2006, United Health saw a 37 percent increase in earnings, a 54 percent increase in revenue and a 60 percent jump in cash flow.
If the stockholders and top execs had poked their heads outside of their Minneapolis Convention Center annual meeting, they would have heard a far less rosy diagnosis about the nation’s health care system from members of the community/union activist coalition Universal Health Care Action Network-Minnesota (UHCAN-MN) who rallied outside the meeting.
Pointing to the massive profits of insurers such as United Health and to the nearly 50 million Americans without health coverage, plus the millions more who are paying increasingly higher costs for less care, participants, including Minnesota AFL-CIO union members, called for quality, affordable health care.
UHCAN-MN member Stefanie Levi tells Workday Minnesota editor Barb Kucera:
Right now, we have a market-based system that’s been proven unsustainable. People are dying as a result of our broken health system.
Click here to read the full coverage of the rally.
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Universal Health Care
A poem by ©David G. Hurlburt 2004
Health care is our basic human right.
Now is the time to stand up and fight.
Put our money and our vote up on the line.
Get up on our feet and walk a picket line.
Dial a phone or write a letter,
Do it so every one will feel better.
Why should only rich have medical care?
And the poor should die don’t you care?
Get out of your chair and in to the street.
It is time for us all to vote with our feet.
Show and tell politicians, turn up the heat.
If we all fight together we can not be beat.
The Iraqis get universal health care,
The rules of war require that its there.
Prisoners in prison get medical care.
But not all Americans that’s just not fair?
What about the hard working poor?
They need medical care for sure?
The system is broken it profits the greedy.
Let us fix the system to serve the needy.
I expect my union, which thankfully includes retirees through the retiree members’ councils, to fight strongly to protect health insurance benefits for current workers and the retention of health insurance for disabled and retiree members. I have been advised by my lawyer, a personal friend, not to count on retiree health benefits because most companies have plans to get rid of them. I’m depending on the Union, and I don’t think it will disappoint me.