Biz Leader Says Health Care Repeal Would Leave Us ‘Worse Off’
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Be careful what you wish for, it might come true—with lots of bad consequences. The leader of a Big Business group says CEOs and other corporate leaders joining the Republican call for the repeal of health care reform should heed that warning.
Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health, a group of about 300 large firms, tells the Wall Street Journal’s (subscription required) David Wessel:
If they really understood it, they wouldn’t [repeal health care reform]. I don’t think we’ll get a better solution in the U.S. in our lifetime. If it gets repealed, or gutted, we’ll have to start over and we’ll be worse off.
BTW, Darling is no closet liberal in the corporate world. She is a former Republican Senate staffer and corporate benefits administrator.
Wessel’s column goes on to explore some of the benefits and cost savings health care reform offers businesses that he says could lead the way to changes in the American health care system.
That will pay dividends to everyone, including employers and workers who pay for insurance….Talking about repeal of the health law may be a winning strategy for Republicans…as long as they don’t succeed in doing it.
Low Wages Are Recession’s Ugly Trademark
Wages have fallen lower and stayed low longer in this recession than in any time since the Depression. With unemployment at 9 percent or better for 20 months and likely to stay that way for a while, wages will continue to drop.
Even the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) admits that wages for working people are heading down. In an article today, ”Downturn’s Ugly Trademark: Steep, Lasting Drop in Wages, ” the Journal reports that 54.9 percent of unemployed people who were lucky enough to find new jobs are making less than they did before and more than one-third (38.5 percent) took a 20 percent pay cut.
Dale Szabo, a Wisconsin man who lost his job as a manufacturing manager and holds two master’s degrees, sums up the bleak situation. Szabo, who now works as a janitor, tells the Journal:
It’s very hard work. I never dreamed I would be doing it. But I have to pay the bills.
Wall Street Journal Profiles Calif. Nurses’ Political Success
The California Nurses Association’s (CNA‘s) summer and fall battle to defeat Meg “Wall Street” Whitman’s bid for the California governorship and elect Jerry Brown, got the attention of the Wall Street Journal.
In a recent profile, the Bible of business news called the CNA, “One of California’s most powerful political players.”
The CNA isn’t one of the biggest unions, but is considered one of the more effective. Its tactics are high-profile and often theatrical, with the union typically directing nurses to hound politicians. For example, CNA conceived the idea of hiring an actress to portray Ms. Whitman as “Queen Meg,” and to show up at campaign appearances around the state to parody her as monarchal.
One Year Later, the Recovery Act Is Working
If there’s one thing Americans agree on, it’s that we need more jobs now. That reality is often twisted by conservatives, who say the one-year-old economic recovery plan has failed. But they are just wrong.
The AFL-CIO is pushing for much greater investment to create the millions more jobs we need to get us out of our current hole. Check out the federation’s five-point plan to put America back to work here.
The fact is that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is still working, generating more than 2 million jobs and laying the foundation for future economic growth.
Millions Lose Health Coverage Since Recession and Job-Based Health Care Declines
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The decline in the share of workers with employer-provided health care, the dramatic increase in the number of workers losing their health insurance along with their jobs, plus reports that employers are planning to shift even more health costs to workers, highlights the desperate need for comprehensive health care reform for all.
(Tell us what you think should be included in comprehensive health care reform. Take the 2009 Health Care for America Survey. The survey gives you the opportunity to make your voice heard and help shape health care reform to meet the needs of working families. Take the survey here.)
According to a new report by the Center for American Progress (CAP), the percentage of workers with employer-provided health care dropped from more than 64 percent in 1999 to just over 59 percent in 2007.
Forty-six million Americans lacked health care coverage in 2007, when the national employment level peaked and before the current economic recession officially began. Today, that number is markedly higher as many workers who have lost their jobs have also lost their employer-provided health insurance.
‘It’s Time to Regulate All Global Financial Markets’
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The global financial meltdown demonstrates the need to regulate all international financial markets, not only the important institutions, says Damon Silvers, vice chairman of the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP). The COP is examining how the Treasury Department is spending taxpayer money to help rescue the financial system.
Speaking yesterday at The Wall Street Journal’s Future of Finance Initiative, Silvers said the overhaul of the global regulatory system should be comprehensive.
All forms of money management in global markets ought to be under a regulatory scheme. Not just systematically significant ones, all of them. Otherwise, we ought to just basically admit that we don’t have regulated markets.
WSJ: Employee Free Choice Does NOT Eliminate Secret Ballots
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A striking concession today from the hard-right, corporate-friendly editorial board of the Wall Street Journal: In the midst of an angry editorial against the Employee Free Choice Act, the authors undermine years of messaging by anti-worker corporate groups by acknowledging:
The bill doesn’t remove the secret ballot option from the National Labor Relations Act….
However, the Journal writes erroneously that the bill makes secret ballots a “dead letter.” But as we’ve pointed out many times, the Employee Free Choice Act puts the choice of majority sign-up or a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election in the hands of the workers who want to form a union, rather than leaving workers at the mercy of management in that decision.
