Health Care Kumbaya
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| Protest against health insurers need to have both a union and community face—like this march both against foreclosures and for the Employee Free Choice Act earlier in March in Lynn, Mass. |
The peasants are filing their pitchforks to a fine point in anticipation of an attack on the palace—and the target of their ire is not what we might have intended. At this critical moment in the health care debate, more than a few working folk are taking a suspicious look at the health care reform efforts of Senate Democrats, President Obama—and their own unions. A headline in my local newspaper, the Lynn Item, helped stir the tempest: “Obama Open to Taxing Benefits to Fund Reform.”
Vincent Panvani of the Sheet Metal Workers (SMWIA) warns:
If any of these Democratic Senators vote for this, they’ll be out in 2010, and it will be used against Obama….[Y]ou’re taxing the middle class.
Teamsters President James Hoffa calls taxing health care benefits “the poison pill that will kill reform.” The Laborers have attack ads at the ready. And Donna Smith, an organizer and legislative representative for the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC) notes that insurance companies continue discriminatory rates for older workers and ongoing rescissions of benefits—that is, targeting people with more than 1,400 medical conditions for “opposition research” investigations so their benefits can be cut off. “Ugly stuff,” she puts it. (At a health care forum in Lynn, Mass., last week, Rep. John Tierney reported that in congressional hearings he asked every insurance company if they would stop these viscous targeted rescissions—each one said “No.”)
10 Reasons to Support the U.S. Auto Industry
Chances are the upcoming holiday get-togethers will provide plenty of encounters with relatives and friends who are against helping out the auto industry. Opponents of a bridge loan have plenty to say. And we should, too. Here’s a quick list of reasons for countering arguments by Uncle CEO and Cousin It.
1. Unlike the taxpayer giveaway to Wall Street, the funds for the auto industry are loans. These loans have to be paid back. The Big Banks who got our $700 billion get to keep it.
2. It’s cheaper to support the auto industry than to let it die. Anderson Economic Group and BBK Ltd. determined that over a two-year period, a $30 billion bridge loan with only half of the amount repaid would result in a $16.4 billion cost to taxpayers in lost sales, taxes and jobs, while a bankruptcy would cost $65.9 billion when costs for pensions, unemployment insurance, loan losses and professional and other fees are added.
