Alliance for Retired Americans Fights for Reform, and Other Health Care News
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Priscilla King, an Alliance for Retired Americans member from New Hampshire, got the chance to join House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (D-N.H.) for yesterday’s unveiling of the House’s historic health care reform bill.
King noted that one of the many ways the bill would improve our health system is by closing the “donut hole” that affects seniors who gets prescription drugs through Medicare.
The current structure of Medicare’s drug coverage leaves a $1,700 gap if your costs are more than $2,830 a year. King and her husband have been victims of that flawed policy and have gone into debt to pay for the drugs they need.
Today’s Health Care News
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Here’s the latest news from the battle for health care reform:
• While much of the media focuses on the Senate, the House bill is expected to be released tomorrow, with a vote coming soon. Call your members of Congress and ask them to support real reform.
• In the Washington Post, Harold Meyerson writes that a health care excise tax could hurt middle-class families because companies
have the power to impose health care costs and cutbacks on workers, who have little or no power to resist. if employers opt for cheaper policies to avoid the excise taxes on more expensive plans, their savings may not be passed on to workers as higher wages but simply kept by the employers. Out-of-pocket health costs for workers would rise, but into-pocket wage increases to cover those costs might not be forthcoming.
The senators’ version of health care finance assumes that workers will pocket the benefits of a cost-conscious system. The senators assume wrong.
Maine Union Members Tell Snowe to Support a Public Option, and More Health Care News
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When Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) suggested she would block health care reform if it included a public option, Maine workers took action: The Maine AFL-CIO put its convention on hold so attendees could call her and tell her that a public option is essential to make reform work. (Recent polls in Maine suggest Mainers strongly support a public option.)
Here are some of the latest developments in the fight for real health care reform:
- Momentum is building for a public option in final bills being crafted in the U.S. Senate and the House. This is a critical time to contact your senators and representatives.
- Big companies like Wal-Mart are lobbying hard to exempt the coverage they provide from health care reform. That would leave tens of millions of workers stuck in the same high-cost, no-guarantee system we have today.
- 55 members of Congress who oppose giving America the choice of a public option are actually getting government-administered health care through Medicare.
AFSCME Members Make ‘House Calls for Health Care’
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Across the country this weekend, AFSCME nurses and community leaders made house calls, getting their neighbors mobilized to pass health care reform that provides affordable coverage to everyone. These nurses and volunteers asked the people they visited to contact their senators and House members and demand health care reform that really works.
Clad in green scrubs, the AFSCME members went door to door in key states, including Arkansas, Nebraska, Maine, Ohio, North Dakota, Louisiana, Indiana and Delaware. Working America members also took part in door-to-door canvasses for health care reform.
Valentina Zamora-Arreola, a registered nurse in Arkansas, said that health care workers see every day the need for a fairer system:
One of the most important things that we want to see is that healthcare reform is done right. We want to make sure that nurses have their voice out there. We deal with the people when they are sick and we want to make sure that we are looking at healthcare reform options and that we have a public health option.
Why We Fight for Employee Free Choice
Union members across the country are fighting to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, to restore workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life. We know how union membership has improved our lives and communities—and we want to help other workers have the same options. Check out the videos here in which two union members describe how their experiences having a union at work inspired them to get involved in the Employee Free Choice Act campaign.
Justin Nickels, a member of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) Local 204 in Arkansas, talks about what having a union has meant to him in workplace safety and dignity on the job:
Read the rest of this entry »
House Recess Begins, Fight for Employee Free Choice Continues
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Members of the U.S. House return home today for a monthlong recess, and the U.S. Senate is set to adjourn at the end of the week. Back home, lawmakers already are hearing from union activists and our allies in the field who are telling them to vote for the Employee Free Choice Act.
As the AFL-CIO’s Stewart Acuff noted at a rally in Colorado last week, working men and women around the country need to speak out for the freedom to form unions and bargain:
“Victory is in our reach. Turning Around America is up to us…the President can’t do it by himself. It’s up to us to make him a great president. Winning health care for all, creating good jobs and fair trade, and restoring the freedom to organize and bargain are a matter of mobilizing the most effective ground campaign in our history. One and a half million workers signed the Million Member Mobilization, tens of thousands have taken action, it’s up to us to move hundreds of thousands to turn around America, to restore economic health and growth.”
Op-Ed Highlights: Making the Economy Work for Everyone
Here are a few highlights from newspapers around the country that make the case for why we need the Employee Free Choice Act.
Writing in Politico, former Clinton administration adviser Paul Begala explains how our system for forming unions is broken and why Employee Free Choice is necessary to give workers a shot at joining the middle class. Contrasting the stories of real workers with that of Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis, Begala says:
“For eight years under the GOP, economic policy gave CEOs such as Ken Lewis the gold mine, while giving hard-working, middle-class Americans…the shaft. President Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress were elected to change that, and protecting employees from corporate abuses is part of the change we need. That’s what the Employee Free Choice Act will do.”
Highlights from Saturday’s Arkansas Rallies
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More than 1,500 union members across Arkansas rallied in 100-degree heat this Saturday, asking their senators to support the Employee Free Choice Act and give workers the freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life. Here are some highlights from press coverage of the event.
Arkansas state Rep. Jim Nickles was among the hundreds who joined the rally at the State Capitol and told Little Rock’s KATV he strongly supported the Employee Free Choice Act:
This is an attempt to make it to where [workers] can form unions and they can bargain…with employers.
Labor laws brought us minimum wage, brought us pension plans, brought us health insurance…all have been eroded in the past 20 years.
1,500 Rally in Arkansas for Employee Free Choice
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Across Arkansas today, more than 1,500 people rallied for the Employee Free Choice Act, demanding that workers get the freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life.
Ministers, civil rights leaders and national union leaders joined union members in three cities across the state this morning, then met in Little Rock, where a crowd of 1,500 braved 100-degree heat to march from Central High School across the city.
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka said the fight for the freedom to form unions is a struggle for civil rights, and now is the right time for Arkansas elected officials to support that struggle. Trumka said:
“I want to thank Sen. [Mark] Pryor for his thoughtfulness, for his willingness to step up and do what’s right, and I want to encourage Sen. Blanche Lincoln to do what’s right–to do what’s right for working people, do what’s right for the middle class, do what’s right for our economy. Let America’s workers, Arkansan workers, negotiate their way into the middle class, rather than borrow their way into the middle class.”
Steelworkers (USW) president Leo Gerard introduced the rally, and union leaders including AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker; Electrical Workers (IBEW) President Edwin Hill; Deborah Burger, RN, co-president of the California Nurses Association (CNA/NNOC); and Jeff Rechenbach, secretary-treasurer of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), got the large crowd mobilized and fired up. (Check out lots more great photos of the march and rally here.)
Massive Mobilization this Weekend in Arkansas for Employee Free Choice Act
This Saturday, Arkansas workers, civil rights activists, faith leaders and union members will come together across Arkansas in support of workers’ freedom to form unions.
Workers and their allies will ask Arkansas’ two senators, Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor, to help pass the Employee Free Choice Act and restore the freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life.
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka and AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker will be on hand for a march across Little Rock, starting at Central High School at 1 p.m. After the march, they’ll rally and hold a catfish fry at the Arkansas Education Association.
In addition to the main rally in Little Rock, workers and religious leaders will rally in the morning in Pine Bluff, Texarkana and Fort Smith, bringing the message of support for workers all across the state.
