MAINE LABOR UPDATE
November 12, 2007
 
Please Forward to Working Families
 

FROM THE PRESIDENT'S DESK
Ed Gorham
President
Maine AFL-CIO

 UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE
IS A TOP GOAL FOR LABOR

Perhaps there is no better measure of the importance of the health care issue than the fact that a year before election day all the presidential candidates (in both parties) are telling us that they will overhaul the American health care system and cover most, if not all, of the 45 million Americans who have no health insurance.

There is little agreement on solutions but both Republicans and Democrats acknowledge the many problems and they see them as a matter of political importance and urgency.

Check Accuracy

As we move into the 2008 presidential election year we need to not only closely examine the proposals of the candidates but we need to keep a sharp eye out for deception and untruth. Rudy Giuliani for instance is now running a radio ad attacking the Democratic health care plans and states that he survived prostate cancer in America where the survival rate is 82% while in England the survival rate is only 44%. This is an undocumented, unsupported out right falsehood. The chances of a man surviving prostate cancer are substantially the same in both nations.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman put it this way, “Rudy Giuliani’s fake numbers on prostate cancer — which, by the way, he still refuses to admit were wrong — were the latest entry in a long, dishonorable tradition of peddling scare stories about the evils of “government run” health care.

“The reality is that the best foreign health care systems, especially those of France and Germany, do as well or better than the U.S. system on every dimension, while costing far less money,” said Krugman.

Organized labor in Maine and the nation is going to be in the thick of the health care struggle fighting for good health care as a right for all Americans.

As is true in many other cases unions are fighting for a social gain that would help all Americans, not just union members. We are currently organizing members to generate support for universal health care. We are distributing cards and flyers local by local and getting the cards signed for eventual distribution to members of Congress. The rank and file will be asking candidates where they stand on health care and will make this a major consideration when they go to the polls.

National Drive
The AFL-CIO announced an historic new drive that puts the full force of 10 million AFL-CIO members and 3 million retirees behind winning secure, high quality health care for all by 2009.

“In America, no one should go without health care,” said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.

“Health care is the top domestic issue for our members and for all Americans, and the AFL-CIO is making the 2008 elections a mandate on fixing our broken system,” Sweeney said. “We will hold candidates at every level responsible for supporting comprehensive, progressive national health care reform, and we will elect a president and a Congress prepared to turn their campaign promises into reality.”

The announcement came the day after the Census Bureau announced that the number of uninsured rose to 47 million, and is up 22 percent since 2000. But it is even more important to note that this 47 million persons is an ever-changing group, so that the experience of being without insurance extends to a much broader group – in fact, more than one in every three people in American under the age of 65 was uninsured at some point in 2006 or 2007.

Health Care Goals
President Sweeney said that while the AFL-CIO is not endorsing a specific health care approach at this time, any proposal that gets labor’s support will have to control costs, cover everyone in the country, provide preventive care, preserve the right of patients to choose their own doctors, require the government to police greed and incompetence, lower employer costs and require them as well as government and individuals to “share fairly” in the cost.  He said a health care solution also needs “to step up government’s involvement in making sure retirees aren’t the victims when corporations struggle with legacy costs, including finding early retirement solutions.”

Sweeney and Heather Booth, who will direct the AFL-CIO campaign, said other elements of the AFL-CIO health care reform campaign include:

* Education of union members and their families about the necessity for federal action to preserve health care benefits;

* Recruiting employers to support health care reform;

* Linking national health care reform to work at the state level;

* Shareholder activism around health care.

The importance of the issue is clear both in terms of money and health.

High Health Costs
Maine is third highest in the nation in per capita spending on individual health care from all sources (insurance, personal expenses, Medicare, Medicaid and other sources) in 2004 according to the Journal of Health Affairs and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Highest per capita spending was in the District of Columbia, $8,295, Massachusetts, $6,683, Maine, $6,540, and New York, $6,535.

We are hearing now and will hear more in the year to come from the Republican candidates and the president about preserving the “great American Health care system” and avoiding government control. What we don’t hear is that we have actually a failed health care system, which excels at taking money from the vulnerable and putting it in the pockets of the rich.

A Failed System

It has failed to:

* Remain affordable. Premiums, co-pays and deductibles mushroom, and employers pass their costs on to employees. Health care benefits present a sticking point in nearly every union contract.

* Cover those who have it. Health care costs related to illness are the main cause of bankruptcies in America, according to a 2005 study by Harvard professors. Astonishingly, of those who were bankrupt because of medical bills, three out of four had health insurance at the outset of their illness.

* Protect the patient-physician relationship. Insurance company interference in decisions that should be made between doctor and patient has become routine. Insurance rules delay and deny payment for diagnostic tests as well as treatments and very often control where a patient may seek care.

* Contain spending. Health costs soar, both per capita and as a percent of gross domestic product.

* Improve quality. The United States lags far behind all other developed nations on a broad index of health outcomes.

* Reverse health disparities. Consider appalling data from the Centers for Disease Control that the ratio of black to white mortality among newborn babies has worsened in recent decades. A study by former Surgeon General David Satcher showed not only that blacks continue to die sooner than whites but that the overall ratio of black to white mortality changed very little between 1960 and 2000.

* Cover the uninsured. Census Bureau data show that more than one in five Americans lack insurance for part of the year and more than one in six have no health insurance for 12 consecutive months or more.

Demand Change
As demonstrated by the popularity of Michael Moore’s latest blockbuster, “SiCKO,” the public, across the political spectrum, is ready to fix the U.S. healthcare system.

No wonder Americans feel this way considering the racket that passes for America’s health-care system — the worst of the industrialized world, judging from its costs, access and quality. At $5,267 (based on 2004 data), Americans spend on health care by far more, per capita, than any other country. (Canada is next at $2,931.) Despite that, between Canada, France and Britain — the three countries whose “socialized” medicine system we’re most often compared to — we have the lowest life expectancy, the highest infant-mortality rate and the fewest hospital beds per 1,000 people.

Not Good Care

Best care in the world? Think again. Once you do get to see a caregiver, good luck. Last March, The New England Journal of Medicine exploded the myth of quality care with a study that showed that half the time, patients don’t receive the care they need. They’re mis-diagnosed, mistreated (literally) and mis-referred. Then they’re billed enough to induce fresh coronaries.

Americans know from personal experience that private health insurance ties up an enormous amount of resources in administrative costs and profits at least $350 billion annually, according to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine. American and Canadian Medicare both have proven for decades that very low overhead costs are feasible in a public health program.

Wasted Resources

The resources wasted by private health insurance on administration and profit could be used instead to cover all necessary medical care, for everyone primary care, specialty care, hospital care, dental care, mental health care, home care, rehabilitation, nursing home care and prescription drugs.

The Maine AFL-CIO Executive Board (and many other state boards and more than 350 union locals) have endorsed “The United States National Health Insurance Act” H.R. 676 now before Congress with some 80 co-sponsors as meeting the goals we are seeking in national health care.

Americans support the creation of a universal health care system even if it would lead to higher taxes.

Strong Support
In a CNN poll this spring, 64 percent of respondents said the government should “provide a national insurance program for all Americans, even if this would require higher taxes,” and 73 percent approve of higher taxes to insure children under 18. Those results track New York Times and Gallup polls last year, in which about two-thirds of respondents said it is the federal government’s responsibility to guarantee health coverage to all Americans.

 

A 2003 study published by the New England Journal of Medicine that found that 31 percent of healthcare expenditures pay not for actual care but for administrative costs. That compares with only 16.7 percent in Canada. Administrative and clerical employees make up 27 percent of the healthcare workforce in the United States, compared with 19 percent in Canada.

The basic facts are clear – the system we have now is broken and Americans overwhelmingly want to fix it and catch up with the nations that for decades have had better health care, universal health care and lower cost health care. At the state and national level the AFL-CIO has made this a top priority and will fight hard to make this goal a reality.

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