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Health Costs Take Historic Chunk of Economy in Biggest-Ever Jump
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Earlier this week, we noted a new study that predicts health insurance premiums will jump between 10 percent and 11 percent this year. Now a new government report says health care costs last year took the biggest bite ever out of the nation’s economy.
The non-partisan Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reports that health care spending ate up a record 17.3 percent of the nation’s economy, or $2.5 trillion, in 2009, up from 16.2 percent in 2008. That is the largest one-year jump in 50 years. In 1960, health care costs consumed just 5 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product.
Over the past 50 years, as health care costs have soared and working families pay more and more for less and less, profits have skyrocketed in the health care industry, especially the private health insurance industry.
Yet the Party of No Republican opposition to meaningful health care reform means these through-the-roof costs for families and the entire nation will climb higher and higher.
Comprehensive health care reform would slow the growth in health care spending, lower working families’ costs and maybe even take a small bite of the health care profits. Independent experts have predicted that health care reform could save working families between $2,000 and $3,000 a year if enacted. If not, costs will continue to soar.
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3 Comments
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There is only one “health care reform” that cuts costs by one half, that is affordable, that is universal (not just for citizens on ly, excluding millions of working people), that is already working very well. That is “Medicare for All” single-payer legislation.
Why is it so much more economical and affordable? BECAUSE IT CUTS OUT PRIVATE “FOR PROFIT” CORPORATIONS THAT HAVE LITERALLY KILLED THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE FOR PROFIT! Most European, Canadian, Japanese systems minimize if not eliminate private profit corporations.
The “single-payer” solution was voted on unanimously by the
AFL-CIO Pittsburgh convention. Over 500 union locals have passed resolutions in favor of “single payer”
To make the “Health Care Reform” affordable, and allow maximum profit for the corporations, Medicare will be cut by
some $400 BILLION and “feelers” are being put out to cut back
on Social Security as well. Bush was fearful of the “backlash” to cutting Social Security. But now Obama, receiving 3 times the campaign contributions than McCain from these gangsters, is demanding that any version of “Health Care Reform” be rammed through Congress while the corporate pawns Democratic Party
controls Congress.
The AFL-CIO and President Tumka continue to support the really anti-worker HEALTH CARE REFORM, despite all the demands of convention delegates, despite the resolutions of union locals, and in opposition to the majority of polled American
people.
WHY DOES THE AFL-CIO CONTINUE TO BE THE “BUSINESS PARTNER” OF CORRUPT AND NOW BANKRUPT CORPORATE CAPITALISM?????
IF THE FOLLOWING WERE FOLLOWED, THE MULTIPLE CRISES FACING ORGANIZED LABOR AND UNORGANIZED WORKING PEOPLE COULD BE CLEARLY FOUGHT FOR!
AS IT IS THE ORGANIZED LABOR MOVEMENT CONTINUES TO DECLINE IN NUMBERS AND POWER. THE MAJORITY OF UNORGANIZED WORKING PEOPLE, THOROUGHLY POWERLESS AND ATOMIZED, WITH NO LEADERSHIP ANYWHERE TO FIGHT
FOR THE ECONOMIC NEEDS OF WORKING PEOPLE.
1. Announce that the AFL-CIO no longer supports Obama’s “Health Care Reform” in any form, and is supporting the legislation for “Medicare for All” single payer health care.
2. Announce that the AFL-CIO no longer supports neither Republican nor Democratic Parties, as both are consumed with corrupt corporate money and interests. Neither party represents the economic interests of working people, organized or unorganized. Both corporate controlled parties have betrayed the vital economic needs of all working people, organized and unorganized.
3. The AFL-CIO realizes now that the simple strategy of trade unionism, the economic struggle for a contract with an employer, is now an inadequate strategy to meeting the needs of organized workers.
4. The struggle for economic betterment of organized working people must now be greatly expanded into a political struggle. Social Security, Medicare, minimum wage legislation, OSHA mandated safety conditions, “Section 8″ housing support programs, government backed retirement pensions, NLRB labor protections etc. are all now secured and protected through government legislation at federal, state and local levels of government.
5. Therefore, the AFL-CIO, along with other union organizations, under these dire economic and political conditions, is calling for a founding convention of a new political party dedicated to promoting the economic and social interests of all working people, organized and unorganized. The new party, refusing all corporate money and agendas, will involve millions of working people in democratic political struggle to secure the vital needs of the people.
6. The economic and social needs of working people never find any expression in the corporate owned mass media nor even in the corporate controlled public media such as NPR and PBS. Thus we announce a new effort to secure a democratic expansion of mass media that gives a voice to the economic needs and social concerns of all working people. We demand “equal time” on mass media, with daily and weekly programing on weekdays and weekends. Working people desperately need easily accessible information and education to overcome the complete corporate suppression of working class perspectives on current affairs.
7. These steps above will complement and enhance the struggle of unions to organize workers and secure union contracts.
Brother Wells is correct in a lot of his manifesto but I would suggest a different tack. When people refer to “entitlement programs” I always think they must be talking about Wall Street, Insurance Companies, and a lot of the medical care industries. It seems that people in those pursuits feel “entitled” to vastly larger and always increasing amounts of moolah as compensation for thier effort. Why should any job entitle someone to be a millionaire? I read some years ago that the new compensation growth would be in Management managing Doctors because of that fact that some of them feel so entitled.The next layer and the next accelerate the cost curve all the way to Wall Street which demands more and more no matter the cost to the common good which cycles the greed all the way back to our premiums and co-pays. I think the AFL-CIO should fund a study through a reputable agency to track this out of control inflation and assign the blame and accuse the perpetrators as revealed. This agency will be hard to find in Academia, because like most “conservatives” they know who butters thier bread and “liberal bias” always seems to be factual information that conservatives don’t want to hear, and they hold it against the truthful. So how about it, you labor big shots? Someone needs to challenge the non coverage the media uses when they report the percentages and not the reasons.
What are the union bosses waiting for? Health care should not be tied to employment. Health insurance companies should be relegated to providng supplemental insurance to a universal basic health care plan like all the rest of the world if we want to compete in the new global economy. Jobs that went elsewhere are not going to come back. Get with the new world. The days of 19th and 20th century capitalism are dead. We need to start thinking out of the box if we want to survive and eventually prosper again.