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Jeff CrosbyOut in the grassroots, workers are mighty angry at the thought their health care benefits could be taxed in a health care reform plan. |
Health Care Kumbaya |
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| Protest against health insurers need to have both a union and community face—like this march both against foreclosures and for the Employee Free Choice Act earlier in March in Lynn, Mass. |
The peasants are filing their pitchforks to a fine point in anticipation of an attack on the palace—and the target of their ire is not what we might have intended. At this critical moment in the health care debate, more than a few working folk are taking a suspicious look at the health care reform efforts of Senate Democrats, President Obama—and their own unions. A headline in my local newspaper, the Lynn Item, helped stir the tempest: “Obama Open to Taxing Benefits to Fund Reform.”
Vincent Panvani of the Sheet Metal Workers (SMWIA) warns:
If any of these Democratic Senators vote for this, they’ll be out in 2010, and it will be used against Obama….[Y]ou’re taxing the middle class.
Teamsters President James Hoffa calls taxing health care benefits “the poison pill that will kill reform.” The Laborers have attack ads at the ready. And Donna Smith, an organizer and legislative representative for the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC) notes that insurance companies continue discriminatory rates for older workers and ongoing rescissions of benefits—that is, targeting people with more than 1,400 medical conditions for “opposition research” investigations so their benefits can be cut off. “Ugly stuff,” she puts it. (At a health care forum in Lynn, Mass., last week, Rep. John Tierney reported that in congressional hearings he asked every insurance company if they would stop these viscous targeted rescissions—each one said “No.”)
During the New Deal, when President Roosevelt proposed raising taxes on the wealthy, Boston department store tycoon Edward Filene commented:
Why shouldn’t the American people take half my money from me? I took all of it from them.
I am not sure where such broad-minded CEOs disappeared to, but they certainly are in short supply today.
Instead, we have leaders like Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley. Discussing taxing workers’ health care benefits, he commented:
We shouldn’t be subsidizing high end health insurance policies that drive up inflation in health insurance.
I guess he missed the national unity memo.
Grassley provides an important revelation. People who have given up wages to pay for their health care—as workers like me at General Electric Co. (GE) have done again and again—and who are already paying thousands of dollars for their health insurance in contributions, co-pays, etc., are actually the problem! Who knew? I invite Grassley to Lynn to explain this to the family of the IUE-CWA Local 201 retiree who pulled his own teeth with a pair of pliers since he lost dental and vision care when he turned 65.
Funding health care reform has always been the fulcrum of the contest. The insurance companies, hospitals and drug companies become advocates of “reform” if and when it simply means a massive transfer of public funds into their hands. The American Hospital Association and American Health Care Plans spokespersons reneged on the promises to reduce costs they had announced at a much-hyped appearance with President Obama and SEIU’s hapless Andy Stern—just three days earlier! (Hey, “voluntary” controls worked with the banks and OSHA, right?)
Profits at the 10 largest public ally traded health insurance companies rose 428 percent between 2000 and 2007. And they intend to keep them climbing.
The “Massachusetts Plan,” which was condemned by the AFL-CIO when it was first passed, fits the “feed-the beast” mold. To say, as the sole union defenders of the Mass Plan in the state suggest, that the “Mass Plan does some good things but it just didn’t deal with costs” is like saying poison ivy is a pretty plant if it wasn’t poison. The Mass Plan is collapsing of its own financial weight. Its cost has doubled in two years to $1.3 billion. Debate here now centers on whether to eliminate dental care or eliminate coverage for certain groups of legal immigrants.
Which brings us back to the gathering peasants. There are three distinct groups of union members girding for revenge if the Republicans and conservative Democrats manage to cow Obama into taxing health care benefits. First are the single-payer advocates, who have argued from Day One that the only way to “reform” is to start by fighting for the best solution, not start from a dense compromise that will inevitably be moved toward the health care millionaires in the interest of “bipartisanship.”
Second are the conservative union members who have told me from the beginning that the inevitable outcome of the union campaign will be the “guv’mint” taxing the working stiff to pay for insurance for poor people. This is a successful formula right-wingers are using to drive a wedge between “working people” and “the poor.” The crisis of legitimacy of the government will worsen, the right-wingers will be the beneficiaries. Rush Limbaugh and the Fox crowd are drooling.
Finally, there is the large middle group that is just starting to pay attention—and they are focused on the Obama Taxing Our Benefits headlines mentioned above. A member of the Local 201 Legislative Committee who is talking one on one with our members, gathering letters to legislators on health care reform, reports the best motivator is: “Tell them not to tax our benefits!”
Comments by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) offer some hope. On July 7, he ordered Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) to drop a proposal to tax health benefits and stop chasing Republican votes on a massive health care reform bill. There is still time to avert a train wreck before it takes us all down. First of all, the focus needs to be on the health care pimps, and it has to be harsh. SEIU’s “Enemies of Change” campaign, which includes targeting banks, is a good model.
Second, we need street actions, protests at the headquarters of insurance associations, corporate drug hustlers and hospital barons. The face of these protests must include both union and nonunion people. Otherwise we open ourselves to the right-wingers assault and present ourselves as a selfish “special interest.”
What we have been doing so far focuses on lobbying elected representatives, who are not the best public face of the problem (although, yes, that work needs to be done).
Finally, we need to spell out our bottom line. “We don’t want to let them say ‘Big Labor’ killed health care reform since they didn’t want to pay their share,” I’m told. But a timid response leads with our chin.
The key is to get out front with our position now. I recently spoke to Lynn United for Change, the local Obama Organizing America group. I told them straight up:
If the President signs a law that taxes our benefits, my members won’t vote for him again.
This was a group created to elect Obama, and they had no problem with my presentation. But we can’t start explaining this in September, when the wreck may be upon us. We have to say, right now, that we will kill any effort to tax our benefits as yet another transfer from our pockets to the health care profiteers. Or for that matter, we’ll kill any so-called reform that does not introduce what the union movement has called a “robust public plan,” in the unlikely event that such a plan survives Congress. Since the Blue Dogs and New Democrats in the House, with a total of 131 members, already have explicitly opposed any public plan that might actually work, it’s hard to see where the votes for this “robust” plan are going to come from. We are a movement of negotiators—and we need to understand our own bottom lines.
It is understandable the president is calling on all parties to come to the table. He ran on a platform of bringing people together, ending petty political bickering, and so on. But that’s not our problem. I’d prefer a slogan of “No More Blood to the Vampires!” than “Kumbaya.”
Sure, we’ll kill health care reform, if it is no better or even worse than what we have now. If we don’t, keep an eye out for the folks with the pitchforks.
For a union movement shunned and disrespected for so long, it’s a breath of fresh air to have the ear of the president. We testify at all the key committees. Our opinions are solicited. A seat at the table is most welcome. But out in the fields, the peasants are taking a look at what’s on the plate. And it isn’t pretty.
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No politician,Democrat or Republican is the working mans friend.The sooner we learn this the better off we will be.Their job is to get re-elected at all cost.I hope they pay attention but know they won’t.We need that thrid party I keep urging everyone to join,big numbers leaving the status quo is all they will pay any attention to.If health care is reformed it will be on the back of working men and women.Think I’m wrong wait and see.
Hope you are wrong. The grassroots folks who helped elect Obama need to start rocking the boat and tell him and our senators what we want. A third party might help. However, it just seems to divide the liberal vote most of the time.
Even the most progressive Democrats are still playing politics as usual, making brave speeches but cutting deals. Meanwhile the labor and community activists, town and ward committee members who make up the active core of the Democratic Party base are getting angrier and more disgusted at the leadership, but the laws are so rigged that a third party is not an option. In every area of struggle the activists are reaching the conclusion that it is the entire political system has failed, and that it has slipped beyond the reach of the people to control.
Soon it will become apparent that even with 60 Democratic Senators we won’t get card-check in the EFCA, and the whole labor movement will be faced with the failure of our century-old strategy of rewarding friends and punishing enemies. At that point the gulf between the people and the leaders becomes complete.
At such moments there is nothing left to do but declare an end to business as usual and take to the streets - not the sidewalks, but the streets! Every great and successful reform movement has come to this point. We will leave our pitchforks at home, and just bring our determination that this will not stand, that we will not budge until Congress passes the reforms that they promised us and which we won at the ballot box. Unity has always been our most powerful weapon, and it still is!
The great anti-Apartheid campaigner Randall Robinson used to say “If you want politicians to lead, form a parade and they will find their way to the front.” We will see then which of them have the gonads to stand with us and speak for us, when we are ordered to disperse and we don’t.
I couldn’t of said it better myself. I guess my comment was not posted, perhaps it was a lil to violent in nature…
This is what we need to hear, Now more than ever;
The FDR Inaugural Address of 1933:
I am certain that on this day my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impels. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.
So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.
In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.
More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.
Feel free to cut and paste it to a letter to the spineless Blue Dog Democrats in office today!
I agree, of course, Jeff.
But I think you’re “nibbling around the edges” and missing the point. The “single payer advocates” position which you summarized is very true– that’s how the Clinton’s screwed this up 16 years ago.
Why are we even talking about anything else? It would work for everyone (except the health profiteers,) it would be much cheaper.
I think we’re making the same mistake all over again– accepting the agenda set out by the right wing, then compromising from there. No wonder we get nothing.
In Local 201 we have tried to walk a line by supporting single payer and also pushing for the best possible public plan. WE joined a picket by single payer folks to get Congressman Markey to endorse single payer, and it worked. He signed on. And we helped initiate a demonstration against taxing health benefits and for a public plan–”Give us a choice!–” at the association of health insurance companies later this month. That’s what we could unite most of the labor movement around, so we are moving everybody we can to the best point we can agree upon. It’s complicated, but the reality is that everyone doesn’t agree and we are up against an incredibly powerful industry, so we try to keep pushing. The scary part will be if a bad public plan passes, everyone declares victory, and then it is sabotaged and becomes a dumping ground for the sickest patients and is undefunded. It will be hard to read the fine print from Lynn. Then it blows up in a couple of years and the popular summation is “See the government can’t do it–I told you so!” That’s a nightmare scenario.
This is either the best of times or the worst of times to be reforming Health Care. The worst being the state of the economy. As we continue to see jobs falling off the cliff any movement toward single payer gets blocked by people saying it is an overall job loss option. “We can’t do that now we already have 15M people unemployed, we cannot put the insurance company workers out there too”. It is also the best of times to be reforming Health Care because of the economy. Maybe the unemployed that have lost their Jobs and Health Care are ready to speak out.
Something needs to happen. People have to realize that they have a voice and can be heard.
The argument against single payer or any reform that says eliminating the insurance companies will cause unemployment is an effective scare tactic for them. But my understanding is that the House single payer bill (676) has a 15 year phase-in that will address that problem. We have to be able to debate the details of all this–which get complicated. Maybe someone who understands 676 can explain this better.
It seems that any real significant change comes after workers get backed up and knocked down as far as they can stand. There are honest hard working people whose 40 hour checks still qualify them for food stamps, or perhaps some form of subsidized health care, at least for their children (in some states). Wal-Mart is expert in helping their wage-slaves to find these programs.
Maybe a few more kicks in the teeth like this will finally get the working-class poor ready and willing to storm the Frankenstein Castle of US Healthcare.
Yeah, but don’t treat the health care fight like its over. We are making some headway, although it looks tough. My union (CWA) is putting hundreds of members on lost-time to organize our members to get involved. I think the key is focus on the “Enemies of Change” (SEIU’s phrase, and it’s a good one), meaning the insurance and other companies, not just politicians, and to briing in community allies so we don’t act like a “special interest”. Labor leaders seem not to want to stake out “bottom lines”, perhaps in response to President Obama’s entreaty to all parties not to draw “lines in the sand”. I hope that this works, but it seems like a weak way to proceed to me.
If private insurers continue to hold the market hostage nothing will change for working class families. I agree that taxing workers’ insurance benefits would be a deal breaker…and the absence of a public plan would make health care reform absence of any true reform.
I am glad to have health care; mine is via my employer. Health care should not be a luxury item in this country. I don’t know why it has taken us so long to understand this but I am glad that its happening in my lifetime. And if it takes storming the streets to make our voices heard, then let’s order the bullhorns for express delivery!
It’s hard to say how many working class families would support Obama if benefits were taxed, and what that tax may or may not look like remains to be seen. But what I do know is that removing the public option from the table would eliminate any glimmer of hope I had that this guy really wants to support ALL working families.
To the Obama Administration: please don’t screw this up!