Obama Releases Revised Health Care Reform Blueprint
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President Obama this morning released his version of health care reform legislation that combines elements of the Senate and House bills passed late last year. The new plan was unveiled in preparation for Thursday’s televised bipartisan White House health care summit.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said working families “look foward”
to moving the ball forward this week toward the goal of quality, affordable health care for all Americans. Republicans in Congress have an opportunity to stand with working families or continue to protect the profits of the insurance industry. We are prepared to work with the White House and leadership in Congress to advance a comprehensive health care bill that will be passed into law.
Most Workers Hurt by Tax on Health Benefits Are Not in Unions
A new study shows that a proposed tax on workers’ health care benefits goes far beyond union workers’ plans. In fact, at least 80 percent of the workers hit by the tax would be nonunion.
The study by the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education looked at both the excise tax on so-called Cadillac plans in the Senate health care bill and the revised version reached Jan. 14 between the Obama administration and union leaders that lessens the tax’s impact on all working families.
Ken Jacobs, chair of the Labor Center and one of the study’s authors, says the tax’s impact is not just a union issue as was portrayed in much of the media coverage.
Union members are relatively a small fraction of the total population that would ultimately be affected by the tax, under either the Senate bill or the proposed amendment….The vast majority of employees affected by the excise tax are not covered by a union contact.
Hey, Democrats, Remember Us?
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| IUE-CWA Local 201 member Alex Reynoso protests a health benefit tax. |
“Jeff, you guys at the Union Hall aren’t listening to us! You’re talking out of both sides of your mouth. We’re fighting the benefits tax, and now you’re telling us to vote for someone who will tax our benefits! The guys here are voting for Scotty Brown.”
That was just one of the calls and e-mails that I received during the week before the Senate vote in Massachusetts. An AFSCME delegate to our labor council calculated the impact of the Obama tax on union plans and e-mailed us all to “Vote Brown!”
For a year and a half, we campaigned against the tax on our health care benefits. We trudged through neighboring New Hampshire with fliers explaining that Sen. John McCain wanted to fund health care expansion by a benefits tax.
Conservative members of my local Executive Board were adamant in saying the outcome of our health care campaign would be a tax on working people to extend coverage to poor people. Recognizing a classic Republican “wedge issue,” we argued that those without insurance include our own children. We could win a plan to tax the wealthiest and cut into the blood money of the health care profiteers.
Ultimately, we were wrong. In the last week of the Coakley campaign, the papers were full of the story: “Obama Supports “Cadillac Tax.” Sen. John Kerry cited an MIT economist who said the tax would increase wages for grateful working stiffs. I can usually figure out which chalkboard equation the classical economists are fondling: Absent merely life itself, they present a circular logic that proves itself. But the MIT argument escaped me.
Health Care Tax Would Hit Chevy Plans, Not Just Cadillac
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Here’s a look at some of the latest news across the country on health care reform:
Following his address to the National Press Club on the nation’s jobs and economic crisis, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and other union leaders met with President Obama at the White House to discus how the final health care reform legislation should be shaped, especially the tax on working families’ health benefits that is part of the Senate-passed bill.
The New York Times reports that during the hourlong meeting, Obama repeated his support for some form a health care benefits tax, but “used Monday’s session to search for a sort of compromise.” In a statement following the meeting, Trumka said it was “frank and productive meeting between friends on moving forward on health care reform.”
• Allan Sloan, senior editor at Fortune magazine (hardly a pro-union, left-leaning, tax-the-rich journal), writes in a Washington Post op-ed today that despite claims that the tax on “Cadillac” health care plans would finance health care reform, more than 80 percent of the money to finance the plan would come from individuals paying higher income, Social Security and Medicare taxes—and the biggest portion of that money would come from people who make less than $200,000. Sloan adds:
The impact on people in the $1 million-plus range—most of whom probably really are rich—is relatively trivial.
• Several studies show the tax on workers’ health benefits impacts regular folks with basic “Chevy” plans and likely won’t result in employers returning the tax to workers in the form of higher wages. Studies also show that no one really knows if the benefits tax would reduce overall health care costs.
• While pundits have been pontificating about the mostly cons of the tax on workers’ health care, everyday folks have more down-to-earth descriptions. Check out the comments’ section following Art Levine’s recent Truthout post about the possible political fallout if the tax lives. Real anger there.
• Who really spawned this awful idea to tax working families on their health benefits? PaulVA at Daily Kos reveals it was the gleam in the eye of the Heritage Foundation in 1973 and was given birth by Ronald Reagan when he proposed it in 1985. However Reagan, showing his political savvy,
dropped this tax like a hot potato once he found out it was so unpopular.
Tell Congress: Don’t Tax Working Families’ Health Care Benefits
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Today, union leaders are meeting with President Obama to discuss the next step in health care reform legislation, especially the tax on workers’ health care benefits in the Senate bill. On Wednesday, you can join the fight to pass health care reform that works for working families as part of the AFL-CIO’s National Call-In Blitz to the U.S. House.
Both the House and Senate have passed health care reform bills that will be merged into final legislation over the next few weeks. The House version is far better for working families.
Overall, the House bill comes closer to AFL-CIO’s health care reform goals, including a public health care option, a much stronger employer fair share provision and no tax on workers’ health care benefits.
While the Senate bill has many good points, it is deeply flawed. Click here to compare the two.
Health Care Reform Tax Hits More Chevys Than Caddies
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Working families, their unions and health care activists are continuing their battle to ensure that the final health care reform package being hammered out in negotiations between House and Senate leaders is real and meaningful reform. (Click here to find out more about the two bills and next week’s National Call-In Day for health care reform.)
The hot topic on the blogs and in the mainstream media is the fate of the tax on workers’ health benefits that is part of the Senate-passed bill.
Backers of the tax say it would impact only “Cadillac plans” but the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) calls that an “urban legend.” Says EPI economist Josh Bevins:
The excise tax proponents say their target is a Cadillac, but in reality they’re about as likely to hit a Chevy. The excise tax is not a progressive levy on lavish plans. Instead it’s a tax that will hit small businesses, older workers, and those most in need of health care the hardest.
House or Senate Health Care Reform? Compare for Yourself
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Over the coming days—and maybe weeks—U.S. House and Senate leaders, along with the Obama White House, will be working to shape one health care reform bill from the two each chamber passed earlier this year.
Now is a good time to compare the two and we’ve posted a comparison here. After you’ve compared the bills, mark you calendar for Jan. 13 to join in a National Call-In Day to the House to demand health care reform that works for working families. See details below.
The pair has many common elements that will help working families cope with the ever-rising costs of health care and address serious flaws and shortcomings in the nation’s health care system.
Health care reform advocates say that more than three-quarters of the bills’ provisions share such features as consumer protections, more affordable coverage for active workers and retirees and seniors, expanded coverage and cost containment.
Health Insurance CEO’s $73 Million Bonus Covers a Lot of Co-Pays—and Other Health Care News
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Millions of working families are struggling to pay the ever-rising costs of health care or going without, and they await what Congress will do with health care reform.
But one person who won’t have to worry about the final shape of health care legislation is H. Edward Hanway. He just retired as CEO and chairman of the board of the health insurance behemoth CIGNA.
Even if his co-pays double and his deductibles and premiums rise, his $73 million retirement bonus—not to mention $12 million compensation in 2009—should take care of those pesky increases. Read more at the Health Care Journal of Northern California.
Meanwhile, the House and Senate leaders are meeting this evening with President Obama to try to hash out the next steps in the health care battle, now that both houses have passed bills with significant differences.
Senate Passes Health Care Bill
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The Senate passed health care reform by a 60-39 margin shortly after 7 a.m. today.
While passage of this legislation continues the momentum for health care reform, the Senate bill itself doesn’t live up to the kind of reform we need. The bill has many positive features, but it falls short in three key areas:
• It is paid for by a tax on working families’ health benefits.
• It fails to provide a public health insurance option, which would control costs by giving insurance companies real competition.
• It does not do enough to make sure employers are living up to their responsibility.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said:
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 House bill is the model for genuine health care reform. Working people cannot accept anything less than real reform.
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.
