Affordable Care Act Reduced Number of Uninsured Young Workers
While nearly 50 million Americans are without health insurance, the number of uninsured young adults and children dropped by about 500,000, according to a report yesterday by the U.S. Census Bureau.
The report, “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010,” showed the total number of people without health insurance was 49.9 million in 2010, roughly one in six Americans, compared with 49 million in 2009. Much of the increase was due to workers losing employer-paid health coverage. Read the full report here.
Keep Social Security Out of Deficit Talks
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When they’re not busy trying to privatize Social Security, congressional Republicans clamor to cut Social Security in the name of deficit reduction. Today, pointing out that “Social Security is not responsible for the deficits we face,” Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said Social Security should not be on the table in upcoming budget deficit talks.
In a Senate Finance Committee hearing, Baucus, the committee chairman, said the Social Security Trust Fund has a $2.6 trillion surplus and will pay full benefits through 2037 and “even after that, payroll tax revenues will be able to pay 78 percent of benefits.”
This is not a crisis. It is a long-term issue. It is an issue that should be addressed sooner, rather than later, to give workers time to plan for any changes. But the current situation does not necessitate rushed or severe action.
Click here for his full statement. Nancy Altman, co-chair of the Strengthen Social Security, Don’t Cut it coalition, told the committee, “the law is clear. Social Security shall not be counted for purposes of the federal budget.”
Jobs Bill: Action Needed Now
As the U.S. Senate considers a much-needed jobs bill with no certain date for a vote, the AFL-CIO union movement continues to push lawmakers to put the needs of workers and the economy before concerns over the nation’s budget deficit. Of the nation’s 15 million jobless workers, 6.8 million have been out of work for more than 26 weeks. If Congress fails to act on the jobs bill and allows federal unemployment insurance (UI) to expire, 8.2 million workers will exhaust their benefits by the end of 2010.
Over the weekend, President Obama called on the Senate to pass the jobs bill, saying the nation needs to “jump-start private-sector job creation, avoid massive layoffs in state and local government and help the unemployed. We cannot afford to slide backwards just as our recovery is taking hold. We must take these emergency measures.”
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.
Dear Senator: Please Support Public Option and Save My Life
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Today, state and local union activists are continuing to deliver the more than 42,000 personally written letters from union members and Working America members calling on Congress to pass comprehensive health care reform legislation.
The letters are part of a massive nationwide week of health care action. Union leaders and activists are spending two days in Washington, D.C., delivering the letters and talking with their senators and representatives about the need for strong health care reform legislation that provides guaranteed coverage for all, includes a public health insurance option and more.
Yesterday, working Americans across the country took part in the National Call-In Day for Health Care Reform, sending their senators strong messages.
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.
Workers Paying More for Health Coverage; Docs Back Public Option and Other Health Care News
As the battle for comprehensive health care reform picks up, here’s a roundup on the latest, including a survey that finds workers are paying more for job-based health care coverage; another survey showing physicians support a public option as part of a health care reform package; and well-reasoned arguments showing why the U.S. House health care reform package is the better bill.
The average family health insurance premium has jumped by 131 percent during the past decade while wages have increased by just 38 percent and inflation by 28 percent, finds the Kaiser Family Foundation’s (KKF‘s) annual health benefits survey released this week.
Today, the annual premium for employer-provided health insurance is $13,375, with the employer paying $9,860 and workers footing $3,515 of the premium costs.
As a result, many employers say they plan to cut back health care benefits even more than they already have with higher co-pays and deductibles for workers.
America’s Workers Oppose Taxing Health Care Benefits
One of the most troubling health care reform proposals—taxing health care benefits—that had gained some traction in recent weeks appears to be slipping. Grassroots health care activists, President Obama and leading congressional Democrats have helped shed the light on, and slow the momentum of, this unfair tax that could boost working families’ tax liability by as much as 28 percent, according to the Commonwealth Fund.
Yesterday, the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call reported that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told Sen. Max Baucus (D- Mont.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, that any health care bill that included a tax on health care benefits and failed to include a strong public health insurance plan option would lose significant Democratic support. The paper said Reid told Baucus to drop
a proposal to tax health benefits and stop chasing Republican votes on a massive health care reform bill.
Health Care Reform Must Focus on Patients’ Needs
As Congress begins to consider comprehensive health care reform, one health expert is telling Congress reform must be focused on making sure the most vulnerable patients are served.
Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women and Families, told a Senate Finance Committee’s health care reform roundtable this morning that if “we can make the system work for vulnerable patients with multiple chronic conditions, we can make it work for everyone.” Ness told the panel:
We will not achieve meaningful reform unless we improve our health care delivery system so that more people have access to better, more affordable care and get better value for their health care dollars.
Senate Passes Bill Extending Health Coverage to Low-Income Children
Some 4 million more low-income kids are getting closer to receiving health care coverage, after the Senate last night approved (66-32) a four-and-a-half year extension of a state-based program that provides health insurance for low-income children. Some 7 million children are currently enrolled.
It’s not been an easy path for the children’s health care program. Bush twice vetoed similar bills in 2007. But President Barack Obama will sign the legislation. Says Sen. Max Baucus:
When President Obama signs this bill, the real victory will belong not to politicians, but to kids…[it] gets kids in low-income working families the doctor’s visits and medicines they need when they’re sick, and the checkups they need to stay well.
