by Seth Michaels, May 1, 2008

Outside the Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allentown, Pa., union members and members of Working America gathered yesterday to call attention to the nation’s health care crisis and to ask Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to offer a health care plan that really tackles the issues of cost and availability.

Earlier this week, McCain held a press conference on his health care proposal. Unfortunately, this plan just won’t cut it. It would raise taxes but not cut costs, would not cover more people (and will likely lead to less coverage) and would empower predatory insurance companies at the expense of families.

When McCain showed up in Allentown to tout this health care plan, he was met by more than 30 members of the AFL-CIO unions and Working America demanding real solutions that protect working families and improve the health care system. The overwhelming response to the AFL-CIO’s 2008 Health Care for America Survey shows that workers—even those who have insurance—have serious concerns about the cost and availability of health care, and they’re ready to vote on those issues.

Across the country, AFL-CIO union members are learning about the health care crisis and mobilizing to elect a president and Congress who will fix our broken system. Central labor councils have held hundreds of meetings and trainings to educate union leaders and members about the nation’s health care crisis and union members are getting the word out through worksite leaflets, phone banks and door-to-door walks that will take place in communities across the nation this month.

But it seems that McCain isn’t listening to working families when it comes to crafting workable health care solutions. He’s refused to meet with union members talking about the health care crisis—but at his speech yesterday, he was introduced by an old Washington, D.C., insider colleague who’s now a health insurance industry lobbyist. Have his decades in Washington, getting gold-standard federal health care on the taxpayer dime, made him lose touch with the health care needs of working families?

Experts agree that McCain’s health care proposals would not improve the system and could move it in the wrong direction, leading to worse coverage than working families have now.

As Ezra Klein at The American Prospect notes, McCain’s health care plan fundamentally and radically disrupts workers’ ability to get benefits on the job.

McCain would like to take the health-care system…toward an individual market where individuals seek coverage without the protection of large insurers or the government…

McCain believes that Americans use too much health care and he has created a plan that will make care less affordable so millions of Americans will use less.

Jonathan Cohn, an author and health care scholar, says McCain’s plan would not increase coverage and would make the flaws in our health care system worse. McCain’s proposed changes to the tax system would increase taxes for many and could push out millions of workers from job-based health plans.

The result is that a lot of people with medical problems will end up deciding to forgo insurance altogether, figuring that the insurance will make it harder—not easier—to pay their bills. And those people will almost certainly do what most people without insurance do: Pay out of pocket until they’re broke or cut back on their own medical care to save money, even though it could mean worse medical problems (and even higher bills) down the road.

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