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Workers Paying More for Health Coverage; Docs Back Public Option and Other Health Care News
As the battle for comprehensive health care reform picks up, here’s a roundup on the latest, including a survey that finds workers are paying more for job-based health care coverage; another survey showing physicians support a public option as part of a health care reform package; and well-reasoned arguments showing why the U.S. House health care reform package is the better bill.
The average family health insurance premium has jumped by 131 percent during the past decade while wages have increased by just 38 percent and inflation by 28 percent, finds the Kaiser Family Foundation’s (KKF‘s) annual health benefits survey released this week.
Today, the annual premium for employer-provided health insurance is $13,375, with the employer paying $9,860 and workers footing $3,515 of the premium costs.
As a result, many employers say they plan to cut back health care benefits even more than they already have with higher co-pays and deductibles for workers.
On top of the premium costs, the Kaiser survey finds that in 2009, 22 percent of covered workers must pay at least $1,000 out of pocket annually before their plan generally will start to pay a share of their health care bills, up from 18 percent last year and 10 percent in 2006.
In addition, 21 percent of firms that offer health insurance say they are “very likely” to raise workers’ premium contribution next year, and 16 percent say they are ”very likely” to raise deductibles.
Dr. Maulik S. Joshi, president of Health Research & Educational Trust, which co-sponsored the survey, says the results
demonstrate the need for comprehensive, meaningful reform. Our nation faces a unique opportunity to achieve reform and build a better health care system that improves care for patients and provides coverage for all at an affordable cost.
In other health care reform news, a recent survey of more than 2,100 physicians by the Mount Sinai School of Medicine found that three-quarters support some type of public health insurance option to allow working families to choose between private health insurance and a quality public plan. The survey was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Dr. Salomeh Keyhani, one of the survey’s authors, told NPR:
Whether they lived in southern regions of the United States or traditionally liberal parts of the country, we found that physicians—regardless whether they were salaried or they were practice owners, regardless of whether they were specialists or primary care providers, regardless of where they lived—the support for the public option was broad and widespread.
Health care reform legislation in the House (H.R. 3200) and in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee provides for a public option. But the bill released this week, by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, does not.
In his speech accepting the AFL-CIO’s presidency this week in Pittsburgh, Richard Trumka said:
We’ve all heard those who’ve said that we ought to be satisfied with a health care reform plan that doesn’t include a public option…a plan without a public option may be a lot of things, but it sure as hell isn’t reform.
Click here to see former Labor Secretary Robert Reich explain what a public option means for working people in a new presentation by Brave New Films.
Meanwhile, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) lays out the important differences between the House health care reform bill and the Baucus bill and why, to achieve real comprehensive reform that provides affordable and quality health care, the final product must resemble as closely as possible the House bill.
In Finishing Strong, economists Josh Bevin’s and Elise Gould write that both bills do curb the worst insurance industry abuses, prevent discrimination based on pre-existing conditions and offer subsidies for lower-income families to afford coverage.
However, on almost every issue of interest to progressive reformers, the Baucus framework is inferior to the House bill. The first goal of progressive reformers at this stage is simple: push for the adoption of a bill that looks as much like the House bill and as little like the Baucus framework as possible.
They examine the Baucus bill’s lack of a public option, its taxation of some health care, benefits, minimal employer responsibility and other differences from the House bill. Click here to read the entire column.
Also, EPI examines the recent U.S. Census Bureau report that more Americans slipped into poverty and lost their health insurance in 2008 and why that data doesn’t paint today’s complete picture because it does not reflect the worst of the recession. Click here for more.
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Why iisn’t this discussed on this AFL-CIO BLOG?
This press release is from the California Nurses Association, which is a
“Proud member of the AFL-CIO”.
http://www.calnurses.org/media-center/press-releases/2009/september/afl-cio-convention-endorses-single-payer.html
For Immediate Release
September 15, 2009
AFL-CIO Convention Endorses Single-Payer
Unanimous Vote for Medicare-for-All Reform
PITTSBURGH – In a historic vote that adds the nation’s leading voice of American workers to a broad national campaign, the AFL-CIO voted unanimously at its national convention here today to endorse the enactment of single-payer, universal healthcare for all Americans.
The resolution was sponsored by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, and the Alameda County (California) Central Labor Council.
In urging its support, CNA/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro, an AFL-CIO National Vice-President, noted the recent death of Crystal Lee Sutton, the real-life union organizer from the film Norma Rae who died last week after a long battle with cancer, exacerbated by her own three-year fight with her insurance company.
“No one should spend the last days of their life fighting with their insurance company,” said DeMoro. “We should not make choices of who gets healthcare based on their ethnicity, gender, or economic status. But I am addressing the labor movement, not Wall Street. And we all know what is the right thing – the moral thing – single-payer healthcare.”
It marks the first time in perhaps two decades that the AFL-CIO has been formally on record in support of single-payer, which would essentially expand and improve Medicare to cover all Americans. Labor unions around the country have been in the forefront of grassroots actions around the nation in support of single-payer and many labor bodies submitted resolutions to the national convention in support of an endorsement.
The resolution notes that “the experience of Medicare (and of nearly every other industrialized country) shows the most cost-effective and equitable way to provide quality healthcare is through a single-payer system. Our nation should provide a single high standard of comprehensive care for all.” It also sites specific single-payer bills, including HR 676, which has 86 cosponsors in Congress.
The vote came shortly after the convention was addressed by President Obama who repeated his call for comprehensive healthcare reform, and will accompany another AFL-CIO resolution supporting other Congressional efforts to pass comprehensive reform.
It also followed a reception hosted by CNA/NNOC and other unions Monday night featuring filmmaker Michael Moore whose previous film SiCKO presaged the current national debate with its indictment of the healthcare industry, and was on hand to premiere his latest film, Capitalism: A Love Story to the AFL-CIO convention.
In his speech Moore recalled that 65 years ago President Franklin Roosevelt proposed a second bill of rights which called for a right to universal medical care, a fight that continues. He noted that every day the healthcare industry spends over $1 million to block reform while thousands of Americans continue to lose coverage, and urged labor and community activists to keep up the fight.
Regardless of the outcome of the current healthcare legislative action, said United Steel Workers President Leo Gerard, “we’re going to continue the fight for single-payer. I’m not in favor of universal insurance, I’m in favor of universal healthcare. We are going to fight to make sure every single American gets high quality healthcare.”
“We know the patient care crisis, we see it every day,” said CNA/NNOC co-president Zenei Cortez, RN at the reception. “We will not rest until we get rid of the private insurance companies that profit off of suffering.”
Greg Junemann, president of International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers and chair of the HR 676 Labor Caucus, which has won similar endorsements from hundreds of international and local unions and state and local labor federations, noted to the convention the unity of labor in fighting for real reform. He also cited the ongoing fight of workers every day to protect the health coverage many have now.
“The labor movement needs to set our flag on the top of the mountain, and that we will not rest until we have single-payer healthcare for all,” said Junemann.
DeMoro welcomed the many international guests in the convention, and noted how most of them represent industrial nations where no one dies from lack of health coverage or goes bankrupt or loses homes due to un-payable medical bills.
“The reason? Because they have single-payer or other national healthcare systems, and because your labor movement led the fight for healthcare. Here insurance companies are at the apex of power, controlling our lives. It is not the public option we should be questioning, it is the private option and its horrendous power over our families,” DeMoro said.
“When we meet again in four years, perhaps if we adopt single-payer, we will be like all our international brothers and sisters in this room, and no longer be the richest nation in the world but just 37th in healthcare,” DeMoro said.
AFFILIATED ORGANIZATIONS
Proud member of the AFL-CIO
National Nurses Organizing Committee
United American Nurses
Massachusetts Nurses Association
Caregiver and Healthcare Employees Union
California Nurses Foundation
Jerry:
We included it in our Convention coverage:
http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/09/15/the-time-is-now-for-health-care-reform-safe-workplaces/
Lots to cover throughout the Convention.
Tula
Tula,
Thanks for your reply. My greatest concern is why is the AFL-CIO is not
forcefully communicating this major change in policy, a break from supporting
Obama’s “health care reform”, to the mass media, and to every member of
Congress
. Let the corporate bribed politicians, of both parties, know that the labor movement and working people (70% support single-payer) will no longer support these corporate shills if they do not actively support “single-payer”.
This vital question is being debated TODAY in Congress.The AFL-CIO should have a major press conference in Washington this next week, inviting all the mass media, to announce this endorsement of “single-payer”.
The AFL-CIO can now start to play a role of leadership to the working people of this country by forcefully advocating the needs of all working people for universal affordable health care now.
To remain quiet, or concerned about other secondary matters, at this critical time on this vital life-and-death issue to working people would be an abdication of this responsibility to be lead.
Jerry, I too was stumped as the single payer endorsement was not a major “news” item from the convention. With a new Pres., I am hoping the focus shifts for labor to push hard that the so-called “reform” bills out there are useless, especially Baucus’ senate version. It caters to the insurance companies and pharmas, does not guarantee caps on premium costs, ACTUAL coverage. President Trumka, it would be a grand entrance if you would get a major push to get single payer on the table. Rep. Weiner’s amendment replacing HR3200 with HR676 was a major gesture to get true reform.
What in Christ’s name is going on?
The AFL-CIO has endorsed single payer. It is now time to disaffiliate itself from HCAN and its pseudo-progressive “partners”.
It can’t be both ways! We cannot support single payer and at the same time support something much less than single payer. Every bill currently under discussion is less than single payer. Everyone of them is a sell-out!
Would any union in their right mind have a wage demand for $1.00 and another one for twenty-five cents? Of course not! Neither should we be demanding something much less than single payer. That’s what HCAN is doing. Dump HCAN. Replace it with EIMFA – Expanded and Improved Medicare For All (HR 676). Let’s get behind something that will benefit all of America’s working class. No more retreats! If it takes marches, protests and rallies, let’s get going! Let’s don’t let Congress sell us out [again].
The Unions that sponsored the single payer resolution deserve our thanks and our support!
Keep it up grassroots union folks. We need to support UNIVERSAL SINGLE PAYER and counter the atacks of the “teabaggers”. We can’t keep making for profit insurance companies get fatter on our backs. The USA is ranked #37 in health care. France is #1. Many Arabian countries are ranked higher than we do. The wealthiest nation in the world, supposedly, ranks very low because we do not provide basic health care access for all.
HCAN was a distraction to slow the single payer push. They had more $$ and of course, Sweeney jumped on board. If Baucus and his sweetheart deal with the insurance industry passes, we would have jumped 2 steps ahead and 6 steps back. President Trumka, we ask you to drop ties with HCAN and listen to the membership’s voices for TRUE health care reform! Single payer, end profit over patient care!