Comments on: Fix Health Care Right—Don’t Tax Benefits

By: grace

grace — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 12:38:14 +0000

This is why I’ve been against healthcare reform from the beginning. It seems that everyone — especially the AFL-CIO — wholeheartedly jumped on the bandwagon without ever first understanding where it was going.

A tax on existing benefits which were collectively bargained for through Union representation has long been under consideration. Why is it only now the AFL-CIO seems to be finding out about it?

And why would the AFL-CIO be so adamantly supportive of a program that takes away one of the Union’s main draws? ie, Good healthcare benefits are a mainstay of Union membership, so why is the AFL-CIO working so hard to give Union benefits to the anti-union?

It would seem the AFL-CIO has lost or is losing its way. Straying very, very far from the definition of Labor Union.

definition / labor union: an organization of workers formed for the purpose of advancing ITS MEMBERS’ interests in respect to wages, benefits, and working conditions

By: Jimmy1920

Jimmy1920 — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 03:51:37 +0000

The President says, “If you like your insurance, you can keep it.”

Why aren’t examples like yours and the Teamsters Local 25 in Chicago and others getting more publicity.

By: Jimmy1920

Jimmy1920 — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 03:47:03 +0000

For more on taxing benefits see:

http://thehealthcaremaze.us/2009/03/21/dear-prez-taxing-benefits-is-bad-health-policy/

http://thehealthcaremaze.us/2009/05/16/tax-my-benefits-the-devil-in-the-details/

By: Jerry La Bathe

Jerry La Bathe — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:15:10 +0000

We were sold out again by the Democratic party!

By: over/hill

over/hill — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:11:38 +0000

I am against the taxing of benefits even though I am a member of the USW Local 87 union,whom are about to loose our (70,000 members) health insurance the first of the year. Why are we not being heard from The United Steel Workers Union? Our local 87 union President is not getting NO help from USW, WHY NOT? It’s “ironic”, that at a time when the government is working for free health care, why did they take our earned contractural health benefits away from us? Thank you. Jim M. retirree USW Local 87 Dayton,Ohio??

By: Rich A.

Rich A. — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:05:41 +0000

“Compromise” and “pragmatism” are code words for “retreat”. Now here we are in December 2009, and we are seeing the results of the “compromise” and “pragmatism” that began even before the battle was joined. We’re at the cliff’s edge and have no further retreat left in us.

Retreat was, of course, a stupid blunder. (Perhaps blunder is too kind a word. Sell-out more accurately describes the “reform” debacle. Stupid is probably the wrong adjective too. “Calculated” would fit better.)

Politicians, be they Rs or Ds, salivate at the horn-o-plenty otherwise known as campaign financing and political patronage. Be it financial institutions, arms manufacturers, big oil, or the medical-profits industry, lawmakers dance with the ones what brung ‘em.

Decent people – the 90% of us who comprise working class America – are being lied to, misinformed, confused, and our very lives are being sacrificed in the process.

The “public option” scheme was an uninvited component that added new escape hatches for the ethically challenged. It did not originate with the working class.

Therein lies one of the great and age-old dilemmas.

“Intellectuals” take it upon themselves to view an issue and then contort it and distill it into their own notion of what constitutes a “solution”. They do so without bothering to first check to see if what they are proposing is in line with the needs of vox populi. They do not speak for us, yet their machinations ooze to the surface of what is euphemistically called “public discourse”. The voices of the people are muted in the process.

For me, however, the lousiest and most hurtful sell-out was the one perpetrated by many in the hierarchy of organized labor. Some of those suits and ties have never broken a sweat, yet they purport to represent those of us who have actually worked hard all our lives. The stench of corruption that has permeated Congress for years has seeped out into other citadels of power. I’ve been a dues paying union member for 42 years. Today’s labor-fakers-posing-as-leaders couldn’t carry the water for true labor heroes of yore.

Two years ago poll after credible poll showed that upwards of 60% of the people in our nation supported a national single payer health care program like Medicare for all. 75% of union members did too.

For reasons that remain unsavory, politicians and their apologists (and that includes the media) hired-on to act as surrogates for the medical-profits industry. Their first objective was to demonize single payer. They used scare tactics like “tax increases”, “death panels”, “rationing”, and “loss of choice” to attack the call for a national program.

Now here we are, and lots of people are attempting to extricate themselves from a debacle they helped create.

How do you spell “sell out”? C-O-N-G-R-E-S-S!

By: Sarte

Sarte — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:50:03 +0000

Lame.

By: JerryWells

JerryWells — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:33:41 +0000

AFL-CIO has spent huge amounts of money and time helping elect Obama and the Democrats, all on the now obviously false hope that a “change” from the Bush regime poliicies would take place.
The AFL-CIO then makes a big campaign for EFCA, which is apparently not going to be passed or even seriously considered as only about ten percent of Democrats are considered “pro-labor”. The corporate financed campaign that has created the Obama/Democrat regime has given trillions to Wall Street, bankers, billions for more wars. But the EFCA, with it’s potential of reducing profits from the rightful demands of organized labor, is seen as a potential massive attack on profit by business.
The “health care reform” of Obama is universally understood as a corporate and capitalist “windfall” that enriches a few corportions, by extracting vast wealth from average working people desperately trying to maintain their health and lives. The most odious and corrupt provisions of the proposed legislation are noted in this article.
But it is especially hypocritical of the AFL-CIO to now beg that these provisions are critically essential to the maximization of profit of the “health care” industry parasites.
But the most hypocritical and anti-worker position of all, the AFL-CIO “leadership” has completely ignored the demands of member delegates to the September Pittsburgh convention. There the delegates voted unanimously vfor “single-payer” -Medicare for All -legislation to completely eliminate the corporate gangsters, essential to achieve a truely universal and affordable health care plan for working people.
The AFL-CIO “leadership” is incapable of promoting a winning strategy for electing pro-labor people to Congress. At this point, this would mean with the creation of a new anti-capitalist and pro-labor socialist political party to elect pro-labor candidates at every level of government.
The decades long conservative and pro-business “leadership” of the U.S. labor movement has effectively destroyed any expression of opposition to the corporate destruction of economy and the impoverishment of millions of working people.
For an alterntive socialist perspective of the kind of change is necessary for the economic survival of working people, see WSWS http://www.wsws.org

By: k2kelly

k2kelly — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 14:07:10 +0000

First please get these red state governments to implement the latest extension of jobless benefits sighned by Pres.Obama on Nov.6.There seems to be a hold on this program before Christmas so the holiday spending suffers at the expense of the Democrats agenda.We need our Union Leaders in each state to put this story into our national discussion.