Addressing Income Inequality Is a Global Task
The following is by John August, executive director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions. Read the full version of his column at L&M Partnership.
Many of us are pleased that the Occupy movement resonates with so many. While not everyone is prepared to join one of the hundreds of encampments that have grown around the country over the past two months, it is not uncommon for mainstream media to recognize that they are articulating widespread public discontent. From MSNBC to the New York Times to many local and online outlets, the media recognize that dominant themes of Occupy—income inequality and the need for good jobs—have become very popular themes.
Just read Paul Krugman in the New York Times every few days, and he lays it out: almost all the wealth created in the United States over the past 30 years has gone to the top 10 percent, with even more going to the top 1 percent, and yet more going to the top one-tenth of one percent. What was once dismissed as the rhetoric of “class warfare” by the mainstream is, today, impossible to avoid. Read the rest of this entry »
America the Vulnerable
The following is by John August, executive director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions. Read the full version of his column is at L&M Partnership.
The U.S. Census Bureau released new measures of poverty in November. According to the New York Times, “All told 100 million people – one in three Americans – either live in poverty or in the fretful zone just above it.”
Or put another way:
“They drive cars, but seldom new ones. They earn paychecks, but not big ones. Many own homes. Most pay taxes. Half are married, and nearly half live in the suburbs. None are poor, but many describe themselves as just scrapping by.” (New York Times, November 19, 2011).
The new approach taken by the U.S. Census Bureau gives us a much more Read the rest of this entry »
Patient Safety: Saving Lives and Saving Money
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This is a crosspost from LMPartnership.org by John August, Executive Director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions.
Unions that are seeking to transform the role of frontline workers in health care organizations know that real change will take more than a high level of employee engagement. It will also take a different type of relationship between managers, physicians and workers. Real, sustainable change will require union members, managers and physicians to commit themselves to a social dialogue that creates more value for the patients and communities we serve.
This past week, the president of the United States announced a new partnership. Here’s a summary from healthcare.gov:
Doctors, nurses and other health care providers in America work incredibly hard to deliver the best care possible to their patients. Unfortunately, an alarming number of patients are harmed by medical mistakes in the health care system and far too many die prematurely as a result.
The Obama Administration has launched the Partnership for Patients: Better Care, Lower Costs, a new public-private partnership that will help improve the quality, safety, and affordability of health care for all Americans. The Partnership for Patients brings together leaders of major hospitals, employers, physicians, nurses, and patient advocates along with state and federal governments in a shared effort to make hospital care safer, more reliable, and less costly. Read the rest of this entry »
Supporting Public Workers is Common Sense
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John August, executive director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions and a native Wisconsinite, sends us this on events there. The coalition is an alliance of 29 local unions representing 90,000 health care workers.
Americans oppose taking away public employee collective bargaining rights by a margin of two to one, according to a March 1 New York Times/CBS poll. The same poll indicates that a margin of 56 percent to 37 percent of those polled also oppose cutting public sector employee wages and benefits to reduce state budget deficits. Furthermore, asked how they would choose to reduce their state’s deficits, “those polled preferred tax increases over benefit cuts for state workers by nearly two to one,” according to the New York Times. These figures may surprise some, especially when so many media fail to explore the roots of these issues. I think what we have here is another example of what rarely is appreciated: common sense.
Democracy on the Line in Wisconsin
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John August, executive director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions and a native Wisconsinite, sends us this on events there. The coalition is an alliance of 29 local unions representing 90,000 health care workers.
This past weekend, between 80,000 and 100,000 people gathered outside the state Capitol building in Madison, Wis. I lived in Madison for 16 years and can tell you that for that many people to gather on the Capitol grounds for several winter days is remarkable: a sea of humans stood inside and outside the Capitol building and filled the streets that make up Capitol Square. This is an area of four four-lane streets that ring the Capitol grounds, measuring about one-half square mile. Close your eyes and imagine the scene.
Do their actions define how people should act in a democracy? Of course they do. The right to freedom of assembly to redress grievances is fundamental to a free and democratic society.
What Happens in Wisconsin Will Affect Workers Across the Nation
John August, executive director of Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions and a native Wisconsinite, sends us this on events there. The coalition is an alliance of 29 local unions representing 90,000 health care workers.
I am a proud Wisconsinite—not just because of the recent victory of the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl 45, but also because of the state’s great progressive traditions. Those traditions include a strong labor movement and the birth of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the major public-sector union, in 1936.
Yet all of those great, progressive traditions are fragile.
In many states today, including Wisconsin, public-sector employees’ jobs, wages and benefits are on the line. The very right to have effective collective bargaining for public employees is at great risk all across the country.
Wisconsin’s new governor, Scott Walker, proposes eliminating most collective bargaining rights for public employees. He has said he does not have time to negotiate over the fiscal crisis in the state and instead wants the legislature to act quickly, so cuts can be made in the cost of public employee payroll and benefits with little-to-no bargaining. These events are pretty astounding given the history of the state.
California Insurers Reject More Than Quarter of All Claims
A new study by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United (CNA/NNU) finds that California’s largest private insurance companies continue to deny more than one-fourth of all claims and two firms rejected about 40 percent of submitted claims.
CNA/NNU Co-President DeAnn McEwen says the rejection rates show one reason why:
medical bills are a prime source of personal bankruptcies as doctors and hospitals will push patients and their families to make up what the insurer denies.
For the first three quarters of 2010, seven California insurance giants rejected 13.1 million claims—26 percent of all claims submitted—a number only slightly below the 26.8 percent rate for 2009. The data, new findings by the Institute for Health and Socio-Economic Policy, the CNA/NNU research arm, is based on data from the California Department of Managed Health Care.
Saints’ Drew Brees Speaks out for NFL Players—and More Bargaining News
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Drew Brees, quarterback of the New Orleans Saints, speaks out on behalf of the NFL Players Association, and more news from the Bargaining Digest Weekly. The AFL-CIO Collective Bargaining Department delivers daily, bargaining-related news and research resources to more than 1,200 subscribers. Union leaders can register for this service through our website, Bargaining@Work.
WORK STOPPAGES AND ACTIONS
NFLPA, NFL: Saints quarterback Drew Brees spoke out on behalf of the NFL Players Association (NFLPA), articulating the concern about a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. In American Needle v. the NFL, the Supreme Court will decide whether the 32 NFL teams act as a single entity, a decision that could make it exempt from anti-trust laws and have a significant impact on the rights of players as well as the cost of tickets and merchandise. The NFLPA is currently in negotiations with the NFL on a new contract, and the threat of a lockout looms for the 2011 season.
UNITEHERE!, Kaiser Permanente: UNITEHERE Local 5 will hold a “limited duration strike” at Honolulu’s Kaiser Permanente clinic, beginning Jan. 19 and lasting no more than two days. Local 5 hopes to block Kaiser from subcontracting workers’ jobs.
Kaiser Model Shows the Way to Improving Health Care Delivery
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Using a combination of integrated, team-based care and technology, Kaiser Permanente of Southern California developed a Healthy Bones initiative that not only reduced fractures in the most at-risk patients by 37 percent, but lowered the care cost for the same patients by 30 percent.
Similar Kaiser programs have reduced heart disease deaths and treatment costs in Colorado and diabetes complications and costs in Hawaii.
Yesterday, a forum hosted by the National Labor College (NLC) and the Kaiser Permanente Health Care Institute explored how health care delivery and quality can be vastly improved and costs significantly lowered with integrated care and technology and by maximizing the unique labor-management partnership at Kaiser Permanente, where some 96,000 health care workers are unionized.
With the nation in the midst of a debate over how to reform the nation’s broken health care system and how to expand and improve care and reduce costs, the Kaiser model provides a promising blueprint.
Technology Alone Can’t Deliver Better Health Care
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With the federal government poised to invest billions of dollars in health information technology as part of comprehensive health care reform, the AFL-CIO joined with Kaiser Permanente and the Alliance for Health Reform to show how the efficient use of new information systems and involvement of all caregivers—doctors, pharmacists, nurses and others—in health decisions can lead to better health care. In fact, Kaiser says its pilot program is using technology in new ways to cut cardiac deaths by 73 percent.
During a briefing Friday in Washington, D.C., Kaiser Permanente CEO George Halvorson pointed out how the company’s practitioners in Colorado used Kaiser’s trademarked health information system to deliver better care to cardiac patients. The Collaborative Cardiac Care Service program uses integrated nursing and pharmacy teams that work collaboratively with heart disease patients and their doctors. The team is connected by technology that helps them deliver care. Activities such as lifestyle modification, medication management, patient education, laboratory results monitoring and management of adverse events are all coordinated through the program, which helps guide the patient through both short- and long-term care decisions.
