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As Jobs Disappear, So Does Health Insurance |
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A big part of the American Dream is based on the premise that if you work hard, you can provide for yourself and your family. But in today’s economy, good jobs are disappearing.
To survive, America’s workers are forced to take low-paying jobs that rarely offer health care or retirement security—and that’s not right, says Constance, a 59-year-old single woman from Illinois. If you work in the United States, you should be able to do more than just scrape by.
I left a job in a neighboring state two years ago to come back to help take care of my last immediate family member. I am single. I moved to Illinois, accepting a position with a small insurance company, who downsized, and within six months I was out of work. You can’t afford health insurance on unemployment wages.
I hired into a new position five months later, after a long search, and enrolled in their health insurance. I worked for them nine months, and again the company downsized and my job was eliminated. Again, I lost the health insurance, even though I was offered COBRA, [which I couldn’t afford because of] the exorbitant cost. You can’t pay $400 a month for health insurance when you are making $150 a week on unemployment.
After searching for employment, and finding nothing in this depressed economy here, I took a position with an insurance agency, which employs six people. [The owner] would not purchase a group plan and told us we were considered “self employed,” and we have no benefits.
Needless to say, at age 59, my alternative is eating or having health care. I have always worked all my life, paid my bills, voted in every election, and now find myself living beneath the poverty level.
Constance is one of the more than 26,000 people who took the AFL-CIO/Working America 2008 Health Care for America Survey. In the comprehensive survey, nearly 7,500 respondents took the time to write about their personal health care experiences. The overwhelming majority, 95 percent, say the health care system needs fundamental change or to be completely rebuilt.
Like Constance, 57 percent of the uninsured and 61 percent of people with uninsured children had to choose between paying for medical care or prescriptions and other essential needs such as food, rent or mortgage and utilities.
The AFL-CIO is mobilizing to make health care a major issue in the 2008 presidential and congressional campaigns and will present the results of this survey to candidates for public office at every level and increase its mobilization to help ensure that candidates who win in November go into office with a mandate for real health care reform.
The two Democratic candidates contending for the presidential nomination, Sens. Hillary Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.), have released comprehensive health plans that would help working families, unions and responsible employers providing health care coverage. The Republican candidate, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) wants to hand individuals the burden and the bill for health care.
For more on the AFL-CIO’s drive for health care reform, click here. Click here to become a health care activist.
5 Comments
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Neither political party offers or supports what is needed: a universal single payer health plan that provides access for every human being resident in the United States health care. Such a plan will not work if for-profit corporations are a part of the system. We need a national health plan administration like we have for Social Security.
Neither employers nor employees can afford the massive costs of the existing privatized health care system. I just turned 65 and dropped Blue Cross when Medicare became available to me. Each month I was paying about $260 a month and my boss was paying over $500 a month for coverage, total over $700 a month, which was more than my rent!! All due to my age, as fortunately I have no major medical problems.
THERE ARE NOW ABOUT 50 MILLION PEOPLE WITHOUT HEALTH INSURANCE! WHY?? BECAUSE THE GANGSTER CORPORATIONS RUNNING THE SYSTEM ARE NOT IN THE BUSINESS OF PROVIDING HEALTH CARE FOR EVERYONE! THEY ARE IN BUSINES TO MAXIMIZE THEIR PROFIT. PERIOD. THUS THOUSANDS ARE DYING PRE-MATURELY EVERY YEAR FOR LACK OF MEDICAL CARE.
Where is the AFL-CIO in all this? Why doesn’t the AFL-CIO start a new political party, perhaps called the People’s Peace Party, to work with other millions of unorganized working people and run candidates on this universal health care
issue as a central “plank”. THE DEMOCRATS ARE SO CONTROLLED BY CORPORATE MONEY THEY WILL NOT OFFER ANY SUCH PLAN THAT CUTS THE PARASITES OUT OF THE EXISTING CORRUPT SYSTEM.
CENTRAL FOCUS MUST BE TO END THE WARS IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND CUT BACK ON THE MILITARY BUDGET BY 50 PERCENT.
Without this essential step, all the money for health care, public education,
etc.etc. will be sucked up for the war profiteers now running the country.
The U.S. economy is in the process of collapse due to costs of war, decline in the dollar, complete economic corruption, massive consumer debt (credit cards), etc. Meanwhile the multi-national corporations are abandoning U.S. working people (manufacturing to China) and are going to places like Dubai (Halliburton corp), and taking their vast (untaxed) billion dollar profits with them, like rats leaving a sinking ship.
We must organize and fight back or we are all facing a future of increasing poverty, illness and pre-mature death. The masses of us will end up living in the U.S. as if we were living in some third world country.
I find it quite absurd that in our country we are charged such exorbitant prices for basic necessities such as insurance which is vital for us being treated properly. take for instance m,any third world countries despite the fact that they may be unemployed they are still provided with good medical treatment at a fraction of the cost that we are extorted by the health sytem here to pay. I was pleased to have gleamed this information by searching the internet and finding sites such as this that speaks about such injustices http://www.costaricahq.org this is just one of the many places that provide its citizens with first class treatment without them having to sell an arm or a leg.
I will say it again as I have said before Get out of the world trade trap and nafta. As long as this country is with those two we will contiue our downword spiral. Get the jobs back into this country and keep them here. Who is responsible for this ? We the people let this happen. We should have raised hell with those who put us in this mess. is it to late? Or will we raise up and take our country back? Or keep following like sheep? Warrior
The comments about this subject are all the same. It is time now to get ridd of this mess and start really getting down and dirty. stop boohooing and get busy with what ever it takes to get our wonderfull USA back to what it should be
Should you unfortunatley lose your job, you would still be covered if we had a single payer plan in place!
HR 676… The National Health Insurance Act.. publically financed, privately delivered….
as warrior above says..quit boohooing and LET’S DEMAND SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE!