Lies, Damned Lies and a Health Insurance Industry Report Condemning Reform
With the prospect of Congress passing health care reform legislation becoming more likely each day, the nation’s health insurance industry has launched a new scare campaign to torpedo reform. Ironically, in doing so, Big Health Insurers also have shown why a public health insurance plan option is vital to real health care reform.
The insurance industry trade lobby, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) just released a report that claims the Senate Finance Committee’s version of health care reform legislation would raise average family premiums to $21,300. The report makes clear that the insurance industry will not lower health care costs on its own. Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), called the report
an outrageous threat by one of the richest industries in America….Our legislators should respond to this bullying and stop coddling a useless industry whose sole function is to make enormous profits from the pain and suffering of patients while providing little in return.
Send a Letter Today Urging Congress to Pass Quality Health Care Reform
Local unions, central labor councils, state federations and national unions are redoubling their efforts to ensure health care reform legislation—which could be on the Senate floor as early as Oct. 13 and in the full House later in the month—is real reform that
- Controls costs.
- Provides guaranteed coverage.
- Holds insurance companies accountable.
- Includes a public health insurance plan option.
- Requires all employers to pay their fair share.
- Rejects new taxes that would hurt working families—who already are being crushed by soaring health costs.
Please join union members across the nation in writing your senators and member of Congress to tell them to pass real health care reform. It’s critical working families speak up and provide a loud counter voice to the health insurance industry’s money and influence. Congress needs to hear from people who can tell their lawmakers about their personal struggles with a broken health care system and why we need real health care reform.
Rockefeller’s Public Option Killed in Senate Finance’s Health Care Bill
UPDATE: Schumer’s public option amendment got killed as well, 10-13, with Baucus, Conrad and Lincoln voting against it. Disgrace.
Looks like one version of public option just got killed in the Senate Finance Committee. Sen. Jay Rockefeller’s public option amendment, the strongest of the public option amendments offered, was just voted down 15-8, with five Democrats voting against it: Sens. Max Baucus (Mont.), Tom Carper (Del.), Kent Conrad (N.D.), Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) and Bill Nelson (Fla.).
As Rockefeller said before the vote:
Why would we not do this? People come second and the profits come first if we’re against this.
Are Industry Lobbyists Raising Our Health Care Premiums?
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While the Senate Finance Committee is slogging through more than 530 amendments to Sen. Max Baucus’ flawed health care reform bill, more than 2,700 lobbyists are working overtime to protect the private health insurance industry and other health care corporations.
Protecting their health industry clients means blocking a public health insurance plan option, derailing strong health care cost controls and gutting tough new health care rules that would put people before profits.
In trying to kill the public option, insurance industry lobbyists are thumbing their nose at the American public, who strongly support a public option. A New York Times/CBS poll released today found that 65 percent of respondents want a public health care option, while only 26 percent oppose such a plan.
Baucus Bill Is Far Short of Real Health Care Reform
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The Senate Finance Committee’s health care reform proposal released this morning falls far short of the comprehensive reform that would provide working families with the quality and affordable health they desperately need, say health care advocates.
In a statement this morning, outgoing AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says the bill
“fails to meet the most basic health care needs of working families and it fails to meet the expectations we have set for our nation.”
The labor leaders say the Finance Committee bill’s reliance on so-called health care co-ops as an alternative to a public option
fails to put pressure on private insurers to control health care costs. There is no history or logic behind the claim that health care co-ops would provide real competition for the giant private insurers that have a stranglehold on health coverage today.
Rockefeller’s Health Care Record Honored
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| West Virginia AFL-CIO President Kenny Perdue (R) and Gary Zuckett, chair, West Virginians United for Social & Economic Justice (L), honor Sen. Jay Rockefeller for his work on health care reform. |
Congress can pass comprehensive health care reform this year, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) told a group of West Virginia health care, union and senior activists. He says he hopes quality health care for all can be won with bipartisan support:
But I have never seen many Republicans for health-care reform….If we have to pass a Senate bill with 51 votes, we will do it.
VA Nurses: One Step Closer to Restored Bargaining Rights
Katrina Blomdahl, writer-researcher for RNs Working Together, says the organization applauds moves to return bargaining rights to Veterans Affairs nurses. RNs Working Together is a coalition of 10 AFL-CIO unions representing more than 200,000 registered nurses nationally.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), a member of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, and Rep. Bob Filner (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, reached out to right a serious wrong when they recently introduced crucial legislation (S. 362 and H.R. 949) to restore the collective bargaining rights of VA health care professionals, including registered nurses.
For the past several years, health care professionals have been scrambling to meet soaring patient care demands from two wars and an aging population. Meanwhile, the professionals who provide the hands-on care to our veterans have seen their ability to have an effective voice in the workplace eroded by the Bush administration, intensifying the shortage in VA hospitals. The legislation sponsored by Rockefeller and Filner aims to reverse that trend.
