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Trumka: Senate Health Care Bill Must Change to Be Real Reform
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The health care bill being considered by the U.S. Senate is inadequate and too tilted toward the insurance industry, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said today.
In recent days, as the Senate has debated health care reform, small numbers of senators have held health care hostage by threatening to block a vote. The new proposal by the Senate puts the interests of insurance companies—and senators who would rather look out for the insurance companies—ahead of real reform.
Trumka said the top priority now is to fight over the rest of the legislative process to fix the bill and make sure we can pass real health care reform:
The labor movement has been fighting for health care for nearly 100 years and we are not about to stop fighting now, when it really matters. But for this health care bill to be worthy of the support of working men and women, substantial changes must be made. The AFL-CIO intends to fight on behalf of all working families to make those changes and win health care reform that is deserving of the name.
The absolute refusal of Republicans in the Senate to support health care reform and the hijacking of the bill by defenders of the insurance industry have brought us a Senate bill that is inadequate: It is too kind to the insurance industry.
Genuine health care reform must bring down health costs, hold insurance companies accountable, assure that Americans can get the health care they need and be financed fairly.
While the Senate’s bill makes a lot of important and necessary changes to our health care system, it falls short in three key areas, Trumka says.
- It lacks a public health insurance option, to offer real competition to insurance companies to bring down costs.
- It fails to make sure employers take responsibility and pay their fair share.
- It’s funded through a new tax on working families’ health care benefits.
It doesn’t have to be this way. The bill passed by the U.S. House is far better than the Senate’s bill on these and other measures. The House bill finances health care through a small tax on the very wealthiest of earners—those who reaped vast benefits from the Bush tax cuts—and it includes a public health insurance plan and real responsibility for employers. Trumka says:
The House bill is the model for genuine health care reform. Working people cannot accept anything less than real reform.
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When will the AFL-CIO get serious about demanding that these Demorats that we put in power do something for the other 95% of this country?
Please read my rebuttal to another letter that will be in the union Fox Valley Labor News letter’s section next Thursday: AND ACT!
I couldn’t agree more with Joan Solms: Make union leadership earn their salaries… What I disagree with is how to. It’s not their job to cut others’ profits. Their job is to collectively bargain for their members.
The elephant is the room is healthcare and the DEMOCRATS. Unless you want an abortion, they’re worthless. Thirty Senate Democrats just voted down an amendment to buy drugs from other countries and negotiate prices. They claimed it was because doing so would kill the “deal” Obama made with drug companies, but they’re lying. That bill is written by, and for, the healthcare industrial complex. Even a “public option” would be a total joke.
What was Obama’s “deal” with drug companies? $80 billion over ten years is only TWO PERCENT off. They only gave that up in exchange for no caps on price hiking (minus 2 percent) and getting negotiating Medicare drug prices off the table. Are you shocked? Nothing Obama does could shock me after that GM bankruptcy. His car czar, Steve Rattner, was a major investor for Ciberus Capital, owners of CRYSELER. Ciberus didn’t pay anything for Chrysler – they GOT paid billions by Daimler Corporation to haul it away and then stick the bankrupt company on the American taxpayer.
Rattner forced GM to go into Bankruptcy and merge with another European company. He also forced the United Auto Workers to give up their pensions in exchange for worthless GM stock. That’s illegal under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. WHO at the United Auto Workers “negotiated” that? That’s what I’d like to know, because that pension money paid off JP Morgan Chases’ and Citibank’s GM bonds in full – $6 billion.
Rather than get into how General Motors went bust because they cared more about financing cars through their GMAC Finance than they did about making cars, or how their GMAC Mortgage might have had more to do with their bankruptcy than their auto making sector, healthcare is what is ruining every business in this country.
I submitted a single payer healthcare plan to Illinois House Republican Leader Tom Cross, State Reps Linda Chapa LaVia, Kay Hatcher and Mary Flowers. State Senators Chris Lauzen and Linda Holmes got one too. While Holmes and Chapa LaVia’s biggest contributor is labor, Cross gets four times the cash from labor than they do. Lauzen is pretty anti-union, but I know he would not let that ideology get in the way of passing a good plan, and he has the guts to stand up and get it passed too. Hatcher also showed support for the plan, and she’s facing a tough primary challenger. Passing healthcare reform could get her re-elected.
My plan is simple: There are 12.9 million residents, and 550,000 illegal immigrants in Illinois. We all pay $100 per month per person; preferably to Blue Cross Blue Shield, who already insures seventy five percent of the state. That’s a $13.6 billion – a month – contract. Employers will deduct it from their employees’ gross pay, that includes those hiring undocumented workers – and their dependants. They won’t be required to pay it, but can write off any portion they do, and get huge tax breaks if they cover it all. Nothing will change for union business owners – except what they pay, and the tax breaks. The plan privatizes Medicare and Medicaid payments, but not the programs. The plan has gotten good reception from state officials, but I feel they are giving me the run around, and we can use healthcare to determine if that is true about the AFL-CIO too.
There’s the AFL-CIO, and there’s the AFL-CIO ILLINOIS. I don’t have a beef with Blue Cross, other than their prices. I have two separate policies with them, and they have been very good to me. Especially when my nine year old son was discovered to have a brain tumor last spring. They know how to negotiate prices better than the government. Illinois pays $17K a year for every Medicaid patient. My son’s neurosurgeon billed Blue Cross $24K for his surgery, but under Blue Cross’s contracted agreement with the hospital, Blue Cross only paid $4100. It’s not their fault that the healthcare system is out of control, it’s the politicians’ fault. I see that from their hesitation to reform it at both the state and federal level, and their deceptive propaganda – even though healthcare is ruining the country.
One main reason that Blue Cross is so great to me is because of their relationship with the IBEW. If the government doesn’t have the guts, why doesn’t the AFL-CIO of Illinois take the proposal right to Blue Cross, negotiate a contract and THEN take it to the state to write it up? I have confidence that Blue Cross will go for the plan, especially when they will be gaining over 2 million additional customers.
My hunch is that the politicians are the one’s who don’t want it. They like the PERCIEVED notion that they are controlling system that is, in fact, controlling them. Controlling all of us. But what they care most is getting re-elected. And the insurance companies can donate a trillion dollars – our votes can trump that money, but only if we use our vote wisely. Politicians don’t believe that we will vote for an independent or opposing party candidate. That’s crazy, considering that’s how Obama got elected in the first place.
All we need from Durbin and Obama is to pass Bernie Sander’s amendment that allows states to reform their own healthcare if they don’t like the federal plan – and get out of the way… Please call your union locals and demand that Illinois unions cut a deal with Blue Cross; call the state legislature and tell them to get ready. If Blue Cross doesn’t like it, WellPoint, the nations largest insurer, is the monopoly running our neighbors over in Indiana. Do they want it? It’s not government regulation. It’s a contract. It’s what real free market consumer based competition is SUPPOSED to look like…
Sanders for President 2012
Progressives don’t have to sit and take the conservative nonsense
from conservatives in our Democratic Party and the RepubliKLAN party.
You influence a lot of people. Read what I have to say and if you like it tell people about this until we bust the conservative coalition in congress.
We’re going to go after the friends of conservative Democrats and Republicans with a massive consumer boycott of those companies that give money to conservatives. People did that in South Africa and India and we’re going to do it here.
I called these 2 organizations.
Omaha Steaks 800 228 2778
Nebraska Beef Council 800-421-5326
and told a person in both organizations, one a beef seller and the other an organization that promotes Nebraska beef that
I communicate with thousands of people on the net and that
UNLESS their CEOs get Senator Ben Nelson to get all Anti abortion language out of the final health care bill they can forget me doing business with them and also forget about me buying Nebraska bred beef at the Supermarket which I will make sure that the local Supermarket does not sell.
Spread the word please.
Demand congress fix the Medicare prescription drug benefit
go here http://bit.ly/drug_benefit
Send a message to traitor Joe Lieberman demanding he help enact a strong single payer public option into law.
http://bit.ly/traitorjoe
Send this message wide and far. Thank you.
You can see further actions at http://WWW.DEMOCRATZ.ORG
If I didn’t see it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it. A party that should have been in power for generations is going to be totally out of power by 2012. What was introduced with great promise 11 months ago has since turned to mush. And you know, it’s not about health care reform or any other singular
policy matter, rather it’s the perceived weakness and inability of the majority party to get anything done. They appear to be falling all over yourselves. The President has displayed a nice smile, great speeches but has vacillated on just about every issue that he’s had to deal with; the quest for bi-partisanship, for better
or worse, is killing the Democratic Party. It’s too bad!
The sabotage of the amendment for a vote on Single Payer put forth by Sen. Bernie Sanders was outrageous and I encourage every progressive senator and labor organization to demand a reconsideration.
We all know that a Medicare for All health system is the right fix for our people and its economic situation. Not only will it create jobs by taking away the employment based health care system, but it will curtail the bloated amount that we as workers subsidize the insurance industry through our employer premiums.
I am a nurse in CA and my benefits amount to one-third my wage compensation package. I would rather pay a little more myself in the form of a payroll tax and see my employer pay less, hopefully transferring the savings into REAL wages for me.
Mr. Trumka, you have the leadership position to tell the Senate to scrap this bill and start over with Mr. Sanders Medicare for All legislation. This would be a real victory for Labor.
President Trumka, maybe you need to restate what you said a few months back, that any Senator or Congressman who doesn’t support the public option will not have the support of the AFL-CIO. You need to say that, and we need to back you up and do exactly what we say.
This Senate has lost its way. The Senate Health Care Bill is a complete cop out.
And…failing to pass reimportation of drugs, what a slap in the face.
What is the difference between the Mafia buying cops and judges and the Pharmacuticals, Banks, and Insurance companies buying the U.S. Senate?
In its present form the bill is unworthy of labor support. To get sixty votes the Senate Democratic leadership has jettisoned anything and everything that might have been worthwhile or useful, added even more onerous giveaways to the insurance industry, and come up with a monstrosity that would leave us even worse off than we are now, if it’s possible to imagine such a thing.
Trying to forge a compromise with private insurance has left us progressively more defenseless and made the industry and its Congressional lackeys like Baucus and Lieberman more aggressive and brazen than ever. It’s time for organized labor to rethink its strategy and start putting itsd considerable resources and energy into building a movement for single payer. If the events of the last several months have taught us anything, it’s that nothing else is going to do the job–not only from a policy point of view, but strategically.
President Obama said, “if we were starting from scratch, single payer would be the way to go.” It’s time to start from scratch. Nothing else seems to be working.
American Dental Association Being Held Accountable for Greed
Republican Senator Charles Grassley’s (R-IA) call for a financial discloser from the American Dental Association (ADA) along with other medical groups is just a start of holding corporate ADA accountable for the money it wastes and spends as a nonprofit suppressing and pushing out competition. The American Dental Association lobbies federal and state legislators to disregard legislation that would regulate the denturist profession in many states that include Kentucky and Wyoming. The ADA spends money to persecute denturists.
The ADA lobbied for exclusion of language to expand the dental health aide therapists programs to states other than Alaska in the recent U.S. Senate Bill 1790. The American Dental Association, wasted money fighting Alaska and lost; trying to prevent dental health aide therapists from providing dental services to Natives of Alaska living in remote areas. The American Dental Association lobbies to suppress dental hygienists from having independent boards and practices.
The American Dental Associations total lobbying expenditures as of October for 2009 was $2,110,000.00 reported by opensecrets.org. The ADA’s self-serving political agenda is hurting consumers by suppressing qualified competitors that provide oral health services to those with disparities. The American Dental Association works against its vision and mission statement by suppressing competition that has been trained and educated in providing oral health care services to those that are unable to pay the high prices charged by dentist leaving Americans without needed dental care.
Many people do without needed dental care because of high prices charged by dentist and not being eligible for Medicaid, low income programs and not having dental healthcare insurance. Corporate ADA has the power and money to change the current dental care delivery system for the better if the American public would speak out against the American Dental Associations deceiving and pacifying public relations campaign for a better public image.
Gary W. Vollan L.D.
State Coordinator, Wyoming State Denturist Association
http://www.wysda.org
References:
137th APHA Annual Meeting (November 7-11, 2009): Denturists: Alternative healthcare providers for oral health screenings and referrals
http://grassley.senate.gov/news/Article.cfm?customel_dataPageID_1502=24413
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/health/policy/08grassley.html?scp=2&sq=grassley&st=cse
http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?year=2009&lname=American+Dental+Assn&id=
Do yoy concur with Dr. Dean that it’s now time to throw out the baby with the bath water and go the reconcillation route as getting a sixty vote majority in the Senate looks doubtfull???
We NEED Nationalized health care under workers control. We will only get that with a workers revolution that sweeps away the thiefs, swindlers and murderers. To expect the twin capitalist parties to give us anything without us threatning their capitalist bosses is to expect the tooth fairy to leave your grandchild a new care under her pillow.
To continue to expect the Democrats to produce on their promises is pure folly since their job is to bullshit the masses while fleecing them for the benefit of big business.
We need to TAKE RESPONSIBILITY for our furture and our children’s future not depend on some bosses politician to waves his/her magic wand. We don’t have a democracy in this country for the workers and poor and to think otherwise is pure foolishness. Power rests in the hands of the financers and manipulators of wealth not the producers. It is our job to take the wealth we produce and distribute it for the needs of humanity not the greed of the thieves and murderers.
What I would like to know is, whatever happened to the “nuclear option?” I haven’t even heard it mentioned. Seems like not too long ago, ol’ traitor Joe Lieberman was in the middle of the compromise that let Bush install Roberts and Alito on the Supreme Court. In hindsight, if the Republicans had done away with the filibuster then, they wouldn’t be obstructing health care reform with it now.
My opinion, threaten the nuclear option. If enough senators don’t come around, put in a single payer plan and drop the bomb. Remember 70% of Americans wanted a single payer plan or strong public option when this all started. Most of us still do.
As sad as it makes me to say, the failure was due to a lack of leadership at the top. If Obama had used his electoral mandate and a popularity rating of close to 70%, he could have pushed through anything, including a single payer system. But that toothpaste is out of the tube.
I can’t think of a single base constituency group that Obama hasn’t been disappointed so far. Ask health care reform advocates, anti-war democrats, gays, those who wanted war criminals prosecuted, those who wanted open government (secret deals with the health care industry). I am sure you could name more.
Craig Crawford said on Kieth Olberman tonight, words to the effect – “The Democrats won’t be able to run against the Republicans and going back to the George Bush days because we haven’t ever left the George Bush days.”
Everyone thinks George Bush II is stupid and Barack Obama is smart but Bush II never ever disappointed his base.
Act II, the Employee Free Choice Act. We know what we are up against. I hope there is well thought out plan and a huge public awareness planned for that.
CUlater
Dave
What a bunch of nonsense! All of it! Yea, its time to throw it all out,”house and senate” and start over. This time stick to regulation reform such as uniform billing,tort and nation wide competitiveness. And everybody stop over reaching!
US LABOR PARTY.
Why do Europe, Japan, England have health care, and not us? What do they have that we don’t? — Because their Labor Organizations have their own political parties , while ours remain tethered to the party that fought in the civil war on the side of slavery 150 years ago. The only difference between the Democrats and Republicans is that the Republicans no longer try to maintain the pretense that they care in the least what happens to working people, while the Democrats still pretend. Both parties are the bought-and-paid-for exclusive property of the super-rich.
The Republicans are the real majority in the inherently undemocratic Senate. Their strategy is brilliant – insure a bill so
useless and unpopular among the very people who most need free, universal health care, that no capitalist politician will ever have the nerve to introduce any meaningful change for the next 50 – 100 years. The only chance is to build a new Labor Party which will start out a small minority but build into an overpowering force over time – like the Abolitionist Movement did. Of course, this would required tireless organizing and maintaining principled working-class posistions and alliances only – something the existing Labor organizations have by-and-large proven themselves incapable of. Labor victories are won only by mobilizing our vast numbers in struggle — not handed to us by the rich out of the kindness of their hearts.
Labor struggles are only won by democratic unions which become ever-more democratic as the ranks are mobilized. How democratic is your union? Find out by trying to propose an end to craven support to the bosses’ “Democrats” and the formation of a Labor Party at your next National Union Convention, and see how far you can get! Unfortunately, to even begin an honest discussion about health care, we must make a democratic recolution within our own unions.
Maybe then we can recognize the elephant in the room, and ask the one question no “Democrat” asks — How come a poor country like Cuba can provide freee health care to all their citizens and many other poor folks around the third world and we can’t? Is that the ‘crime’ U.S. policy punishes them for every day?
Please tell me the the AFL-CIO won’t find an excuse to go along with this phony bill no matter how reactionary it becomes after Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson get through with it. Lie to me.
I am Mad! So much for “Friends” in Congress.
The “Cadillac Tax” will hurt working Union families with an extra tax burden. Forget about those making $500K, this tax will be taken out of every Union Members paycheck. We should thank Congress for their back stabbing by Voting them out of office.
And, to our Union Leaders. Think twice before you sign on to a Politicians promise. THEY LIE!!!