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New Report Shows Health Care Reform Will Lower Cost |
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The next two weeks will be a pivotal time in the nation’s history as the U.S. Senate debates health care reform.
Health care reform will help control costs to families, lowering out-of-pocket costs for most people buying insurance, according to a new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report. But there’s still a long way to go to make the Senate’s bill into the kind of reform our country needs, and union members are taking the lead in that fight.
This week and next, union members, unemployed workers, faith leaders and community allies of health care reform will join together for roundtable discussions in key states like Indiana, Nebraska and Louisiana. They’ll share real-life stories about their experiences with the nation’s broken health care system and what we need to do to fix it.
Union leaders from around the country also will be coming to Washington, D.C., next week to visit members of Congress and emphasize the message that hundreds of thousands of union members and allies have delivered letters and made phone calls all year: We need health care reform that works for working families.
You can contact your senators here to let them know you demand health care reform that doesn’t tax our benefits, that makes sure employers participate responsibly and that includes a public option to hold insurance companies accountable.
Here’s more news from the fight for health care reform:
- Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic points out some weaknesses of the Senate, especially compared with the stronger, more effective bill the House passed.
- Art Levine, writing at In These Times, has a great article about the upcoming health care fight—the players, the dangers and the opportunities to improve the bill.
- At Health Affairs, Tim Jost takes a look at what’s in the Senate’s bill.
- Yet another reason we need health care reform: The nation’s ongoing jobs crisis has left millions at risk of losing coverage.
- Matt Browner Hamlin looks at how opponents of health care reform will try to use amendments not to improve the bill, but kill it.
- Opponents of health care reform rejected an effort to put amendments online for the public.
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Yes, we need to lower out of pocket costs. My income is around $32,000 with no dependents and I pay around $175 a month. I would be ok with that except that my out of pocket costs for tests, prescriptions, etc are over $1000 per year. This really hurts my income. If I would end up in the hospital, it could posslibly be well over $5,000 and I simply would not be able to pay it. I have BC/BS which is supposed to be better than most, so something has to be done.
Do you know how much your employer is paying, because if it’s high, that represents you giving up REAL WAGES for inflated health premiums.
I’m is a low-paying job as a nurse. My employer’s contribution is the same as my net pay check. That’s too high.
I’m glad to see that the AFL-CIO is calling this bill something other than a “public option.” However, I don’t consider steering millions of “customers” into the hands of the ‘for profits,’ “reform” either. Perhaps someday the rank and file will wake up and realize
how they are being bamboozled by the leadership. All of this could have been avoided if the leadership had stood up for the rank and file and followed the resolution demanding Single Payer Universal Health Care for All proposed in HR-676.
you are 100 percent correct. it may have better just to fix the health care system we have in place now
Yes, there is a collaborative effort on the part of AFL-CIO and our government to deny us the correct solution —Single Payer
Hear ye! Hear me!
Single Payer with very tight budget controlled HMOs with emphasis on wellness (i.e. environmental/public health).
Dealing with pollution at the source (definitely with concern directly related tobacco, alcohol, and sources and causes of obesity (e.g. sugar waters, consumption of meat without rigorous exercise, etc.).
Please, let us get our eduaction together. Work with me on developing the izquierdo correcto policies, programs, and projects related to promoting the “general welfare” both within and beyond the borders of our fifty plus ONE (and that’s reality) ways and means and the necessary libertarian voluntary evolution of the “private sector” to a quasi-public ONE.
In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity
Mike Morin
Eugene, OR
Peoples’ Equity Union
Industrious Workers of the World
International Workers of the World
United Socialist Workers (USW)
Hospital costs are are even higher than you think. I was in a hospital in New Jersey for 6 days in August 2009 and the bill was $32,000. That is over $5000 a day. And it was nothing major; just IV to thin my blood so an oral pill could take over.
We do have the worst health care in the civilized world, and the most expensive. Don’t let right-wing bobbing heads say anything different. The citizens of the US have the worst health care in the civilized world.
Everyone in the Medical Industrial complex is on the take….insurance, drug companies, nursing homes, doctors and dentists, and medical devices. They are all fighting single payer reform.
IMO the public option was a ruse to keep us away from Single Payer.
When you start believing Congress, you are in deep trouble.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) released a merged version of the Senate comprehensive reform on 11/19/09,
which Mike Oliphant, whom manages http://www.benefitsmanager.net for Utah based health insurance plans for employers could get
behind and support some of it (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or H.R. 3590).
This should encourage the private sector health insurance carriers to form INSURANCE EXCHANGES which is what we have
done here in Utah. They carry the risk and burden, not the tax payer. See more about this at http://www.utahhealthplans.info
You would be surprised about the willingness of carriers to co-share risk amongst their immediate competitors. They simply
focus on profit from the 4 to 5 percent administration fees. A government run public option could not achieve this.
It is highly misleading to claim the Congressional Budget Office report says insurance costs will come down if the Senate bill passes. The report refers only to individual rates, which costs far more than the group rates most union members get and are already beyond the reach of most working people.
And the only reason the CBO says people in the individual market might pay less is because the government is supposed to subsidize premium payments for those who can’t afford them. As insurance premiums continue to soar, that’s going to put a huge strain on the federal budget. Should the bill pass, don’t be surprised if the govt. tries to weasel out of this particular commitment for economy reasons.
Neither the Senate nor the House bills do anything to control costs, and neither poses a real threat to insurance industry profits. We’ll be using our tax dollars to subsidize the industry rather than treat the sick.
If AFL-CIO lobbyists truly think this mess is the best we can get from the current Congress, so be it. But we should not destroy our credibility by making claims for the legislation that the facts will not support. What are union members supposed to think if the bill passes and premiums continue to rise at the current rate of 10% a year? “Gee, the AFL-CIO blog said costs would go down!What kind of BS have they been feeding us?”
We should not answer the lies of our enemies with lies of our own.
US LABOR PARTY. Funded, and staffed by US Labor. US LABOR PARTY. Pick our spots, and run candidates in “select” Congressional Districts. US LABOR PARTY. Let the “Blue chips” fall where they may. US LABOR PARTY. Enough is enough. US LABOR PARTY. US LABOR PARTY. US LABOR PARTY. US LABOR PARTY.