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Workers with Employer-Covered Health Care Declined by 6.4 Million |
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Here’s another reason why most of us in the United States are not better off now than seven years ago: 6.4 million fewer workers had employer-provided health insurance in 2006 than in 2000. These data released this week from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) show the decline in coverage has taken place across the spectrum of age, education, occupation, industry, race and ethnicity. Further, EPI notes:
While workers with more education are more likely to receive health insurance from their employers, workers from all education levels have seen similar declines in coverage. Specifically, workers with no more than a high school education saw a decline of 5.0 percentage points, workers with some college education but no bachelor’s degree saw a decline of 4.2 percentage points, and workers with a college degree or more saw a decline of 3.6 percentage points.
Recently, more than 26,000 people took our online AFL-CIO/Working America 2008 Health Care for America Survey, and nearly 7,500 respondents told us about their personal health care experiences. Those who took the survey are predominantly college-educated and have jobs and health insurance. And the results are stunning.
- Some two-thirds (61 percent) who have employer-provided coverage say their costs have gotten worse.
- One-third report skipping medical care because of cost, and a quarter had serious problems paying for the care they needed.
- Ninety-five percent say they are somewhat or very concerned about being able to afford health insurance in the coming years.
- Almost half overall (48 percent) and 60 percent of Latinos say they have or a family member has stayed in a job to keep health care benefits when they would have preferred changing jobs.
- Ninety-five percent of respondents say America’s health care system needs fundamental change or to be completely rebuilt.
- Seventy-nine percent say health care is a very important voting issue, and 97 percent say they plan to vote in the November elections.
The survey gives us the info to present to lawmakers at all levels as the unions of the AFL-CIO mobilize with a broad alliance of grassroots organizations to win progressive reform and give millions more union members the information and tools to become active players and health care voters.
Take part by signing the petition for secure, high-quality health care for all and stop back often to get the latest updates. And sign up to join the AFL-CIO’s Working Families e-Activist Network and get updates on the health care campaign and other issues that affect America’s working families.
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If the labor movement is to have any relevance to working people in this century, it must completely re-think it’s entire notion of what it is about, who it represents, and how to organize for the benefit of working people. In other words, it must justify it’s existence or simply die.
The existing privatized health care system is a perfect example. The current privatized system does not work because it is not designed to provide health care! The existing system is designed to maximize profit for the health care “provider” industry. PERIOD. Thus it charges outrageous fees, especially as they get older. They drop people by the thousands whener their cost of care skyrockets (prices driven up by drug companies, for-profit hospitals,multi- millionaire doctors, etc.), Prices are so high that employees can’t afford co-payments, employers can’t afford to pay anything any more especially as business declines.
There is only one solution: a national universal single-payer health plan paid for by everyone but benefitting everyone. Cut out the profit margins and we then will have an affordable system (as countries like England and the Scandanavian countries found out a HUNDRED YEARS AGO).
The labor movement must re-organize and reconstitute itself. Obviously, withouth abandoning existing organized workers, it must become the national spoksperson and organizer for the needs of all working people.
It must cease to be a “business partner” to existing corporate capitalism but start organizing all working people.
Union organizing may no longer be possible as manufacturing has gone to China! But working people are still here with needs to be met! But the existing union movement has NOTHING TO SAY to the vast majority of unorganized working people.
Instead of trying to organize more workers into more unions (something extremely difficult, expensive if not impossible.) THE LABOR MOVEMENT MUST ORGANIZE A NEW POLITICAL PARTY TO REPRESENT THE INTERESTS OF WORKING PEOPLE.
The Democratic Party is so completely controlled by corporate money and corporate agendas, and the labor movement cannot compete in campaign contributions that the corporations can provide, so labor must DUMP THE DEMOCRATS.
How to organize the working people? Into a new political party that is not simply a “labor” party representing the organized labor movement. It must organize all working people at every level, to unite into a new movement and a new party that represents the needs of working people and not corporte profit interests.
A People’s Peace Party (PPP) to give it a name for the moment. From the name given here it is a PEOPLE’S PARTY that does not accept money or agendas from corporate profit interests. The PPP is a PEACE PARTY opposed to the wars for profit and power that is the underlying motivation of the Bush gang.
A platform must be created based on the needs of the people for first of all PEACE. The military industrial complex is looting the federal treasury, looting all social institutions of funding, and threatens to destroy what little we have left (Free public schools, social security, etc.) with “privatization”.
The next core principle is NO CORPORATE MONEY, AGENDAS. End the privatization of the federal government, end corporate “person-hood”. etc.
The next core principle: Universal health Insurance for all people living in the U.S. …. ALL PEOPLE. not just children, or employed people, or citizens but every man, woman and child.
How to organize? Mass media! The corporate controlled media establishment has forever blocked out news and opnion and perspectives of working people. Newspapers always have “Business” or “Money” or “Stock Market” pages for the wealth. NOTHING to inform working people of the crises in economics we are now all facing.
The PPP should be an “umbrella” organization to unite working people as individuals, but also organizations that have been trying to improve conditions of people for years to little effect because they are always atomized and thus ineffective. PTA groups supporting quality public education, Seniors organizations, health care advocates, etc. should all in a united effort join with organized unions to take over political power in elections at every level of government.
Without such an effort under conditions of unending war, economic collapse, health care unavailable, inflation of essentials to live, etc. the future will become increasingly anarchic. The U.S. will soon become a third world country as the giant corporations move out (like rats leaving a sinking ship!) their money away from tax collectors.
JerryWells,
Theres a lot of ideas, do you just write them or do you put them in action, I run a website, and I am active in the real world. I would like to see you get your own message out there, it’s easy to start a blog, Just Do It!
My ideals are fighting for all workers, as unions do, even if it is a byproduct in some cases.
As far as a new party, we had a chance to get closer with Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul, but labor backed away from both of those candidates, even rallied against Ron Paul because of his voting record on labor issues. Many people including myself see a need for a 3rd. party. Many key issues stagnate due to partisan politics, many representatives and senators are unable to vote in what is right, without hurting their parties approval and/or their corporate cronies.
I like the “Progressive” party, taking the good Democratic ideals with a blend of original Republican ideals, before the party turned ultra Right-Wing, and not scaring off the rest of the public with the term “people”, which some will equate to “communism”, remember most voters are older.
The party I would back would have a sincere route to citizenship for illegal aliens, if, and only if, they do a few things:
Someone actually said that after I explained my belief that the non-use of a standard language in this country benefits corporations, companies and the bosses ,I was told I was a racists. I would think that someone who is opposed to racism and discrimination, who wants to bring up the field and create an atmosphere of equality would be considered a hero.
In my field, construction, there are people from far off lands being abused every day, I call this debacle “Sweatshop Construction”:
Just Friday, during the nighttime rush hour, a few weeks after the crane accident which killed 7, I watched in horror as on a busy street in Manhattan, undocumented workers(yes I asked with my poor understanding of Spanish) were erecting a overhead scaffold consisting of steel beams without proper safety equipment, not only that they were doing it directly over the public. Yes people with baby carriages were walking directly under potential death, I’m sure the workers didn’t want it to be that way, but were afraid to speak up in fear of losing their job or worse yet, deportation. The illegal immigration problem here hurts everyone. I had to go to the website of Al Jazeera to even find any recent article about how bad it is, talk about media bias. From the story Al Jazeera writes on safety in NY sweatshop construction industry
As far as health care and a single payer plan, anyone left that is a Democrat is the most likely to be able to get that accomplished, and only if labor holds them accountable. I have read John McCain’s health initiative(plan), and although he is a great American by his own rights, his plan which doesn’t specify adding insured Americans, would call for every worker adding the cost of his insurance benefits into his yearly tax burden, as if it were salary. Did you get that? John McCain wants us to pay tax on the gross costs of our benefit plan. Some plans are upwards of $25,000, imagine adding that to your taxable income?
My apologies Tula, that last post should have been a response to the previous post.
The NY Times, today (4/20), has released a very important article, which unfortunately does not delve into Health Care, but expresses in great detail, the decline of middle class wages in the US. Health care costs/loss, inflation, loss of public services due to war costs and lowers wages are exacerbating the troubles for American workers. Today is the day for all workers to unite and take a stand.
The wage that meant middle class - excerpt below
Hey I have an idea,
Like a lot of folks in my state of FLorida, I have a job. I work, they pay me. I pay my taxes and the government distributes my taxes as it sees fit.
In order to get that paycheck, I am required to pass a random urine test with which I have no problem.
What I do have a problem with is the distribution of my taxes to people who don’t have to pass a urine test.
Shouldn’t one have to pass a urine test to get a welfare check because I have to pass one to earn it for them?
Please understand, I have no problem with helping people get back on their feet.
I do, on the other hand, have a problem with helping someone sitting on their posteriors, doing drugs, while I work. . . .
Can you imagine how much money the state let alone the country would save if people had to pass a urine test to get a public assistance check? We could take all that money and buy insurance for those who are actually working & can’t afford it.
That’s my contribution.
Endorse and promote H.R.676 Medicare for everybody.
Take health care off the negotiating table.
Rrichard Neill
For a disgusting look at the other side of the story, check out the site called Too Much. It is “executive porn”, the outrageous behavior of the rich and their neverending quest for more, more, more, their “legal” robbery and disregard for others.
“In 2007, the business trade journal Alpha reported last week, the hedge fund world’s top 50 income-earners collected $29 billion — an average of $581 million each. The king of them all, John Paulson of Paulson & Co., last year took home $3.7 billion from his hedge fund labors.”
http://www.toomuchonline.org/tmweekly.html
Times are changing for the worse. I go back to the time in America where nearly every working family had all kinds of health insurance on nearly every job. Health coverage was a complete normal situatiuon. But the mind set of many people are bordering on the verge of mental retardation, In California, a few years ago, a bill to provide for health insurance by employer and employee contributions was voted down. This has to change. Health insurance is a necessity, not a benefit.
Medicare works
You cannot get anywhere without your medicare card.
Medicare is accepted by everybody.
H.R.676 expands on medicare.
H.R.676 is medicare for everybody.
Endorse and promote H.R.676
This employer provided scheme is what most of us have. Every yr. the profit makers; the insurance companies tell the employers “the cost of providing health care is going up” so we have to raise our premiums, and the cost gets passed on to the employees… higher premiums, higher co-pays to Dr. offices and for medications… Now Bush and his cronies are promoting Health Savings Accounts, which are disasters waiting to happen.
The plan killed in California was a mandated bill, in others you are not covered, you better be if the bill became law. Just like Massachusetts…it is failing!
Hillary and Obama have similar mandated plans.
HR 676, is the National Health Insurance Act. It covers all Americans and yes, it would take health care off the negotiating table.. No co-pays, you pick your doctor to care for you and hospital, if needed.
HR 676 has been endorsed by 401 union organizations in 48 states
including 104 Central Labor Councils and Area Labor Federations and 33 state AFL-CIO’s (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).
Isn’t it time for change? for the better, because the status quo on health care makes me SICK!