Almost all of the nation’s unions are pressuring congressional negotiators to improve on the version of health care reform passed by the Senate on Christmas Eve, calling upon lawmakers to adopt approaches taken by the House in the stronger bill it approved in the fall.
The Senate approved the landmark legislation with a 60-39 party-line vote after a marathon debate forced by the 40 Republican members of that body. All 58 Democrats and two independents voted for the bill and 39 Republicans voted against it. Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Kent., was absent.
The bill would impose, in a few years, new curbs on insurance company power, including making illegal their current practices of denying coverage for pre-existing conditions and dropping coverage for people who get sick. If it becomes law everyone, except for undocumented workers, will be required to purchase insurance and there will be subsidies for those who can’t afford it.
On the downside, as far as labor is concerned, the bill taxes 40 percent of the value of all existing insurance policies worth more than $8,500 for an individual and $23,000 for a family. There are no ceilings on prices insurance companies can charge and there is no public option, a feature labor supports, to compete with private insurers and bring costs down.
Liberal lawmakers have made it clear since the Senate vote on Dec. 24 that they will not give up on the public option. Senate Health, Education and Labor Committee Chairman Thomas Harkin, D-Iowa, said, after the Senate vote, that the public option would be “revisited” in future legislation.
After the vote Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO repeated a statement he made a few days earlier: “The labor movement has been fighting for health care for nearly 100 years and we are not about to stop fighting now when it really matters. For this health care bill to be worthy of the support of working men and women, substantial changes must be made.”
Despite the problems labor has with the bill, only one union has actually called for lawmakers to vote it down. The 150,000-member National Nurses United blasted it as a giveaway to the insurance companies.
“It is tragic to see the promise from Washington this year for genuine, comprehensive reform ground down to a seriously flawed bill that could actually exacerbate the healthcare crisis and financial insecurity for American families, and that cedes far too much additional power to the tyranny of a callous insurance industry,” said NNU co-president Karen Higgins. Fellow co-president, Deborah Burger, challenged the effectiveness of the bill’s new regulations on insurers. “Those wishful statements ignore the reality that much of the expanded coverage is based on forced purchase of private insurance without effective controls on industry pricing practices or real competition,” she said.
The Change to Win labor federation issued no statement after the passage of the Senate bill but posted on its website an open letter on health care from Service Employees President Andy Stern, the coalition’s largest union.
In the letter Stern said SEIU’s board has decided to “keep fighting for a better final bill.”
“At the very moment that we saw real and meaningful changes within our grasp, one senator came forward to say ‘no, we can’t,’” Stern said, referring to Connecticit’s Independent, Sen. Lieberman. “He can’t let the Senate have an up or down vote on health insurance reform and the result of this senator saying ‘no we can’t’ is that the public option is declared impossible and Americans can’t purchase Medicare at an earlier age. The health insurance reform effort we have needed for a century is at risk.”
Stern noted that “It is becoming clearer that, for many people, care will still be too expensive to afford, that some of you would face an additional burden because your health insurance benefits would be taxed…”
Some unions have been able to get their employers to back the effort to kill the tax on workers’ insurance benefits.
The Communications Workers and the Electrical Workers and two of their biggest employers, AT&T and Verizon, signed a joint letter to senators objecting to the tax. “Even in its current form, the 40 percent excise tax on current health care plans is a misguided tool,” CWA President Larry Cohen, IBEW President Ed Hill and their corporate counterparts wrote.
“To avoid the additional financial burden of the 40 percent tax, many employers will be compelled to make significant changes in their benefit plans. Some of these predictable changes will be cut backs in dental and vision coverage, increased out-of-pocket costs by employees and reduced family coverage,” they said.
AFT President Randi Weingarten said: “From the outset of the healthcare debate, the AFT has supported reform proposals such as the House bill’s robust public plan, which would provide much needed competition with private insurers. We encourage the House-Senate conferees to find a way to include real competition that will help control costs and ensure affordability. AFT members are disappointed the Senate legislation includes a tax on some employer-based plans. If this becomes law, it will come at the expense of increasing workers’ costs as employers either cut benefits to avoid the steep 40 percent excise tax or pass the tax on to workers in the form of higher premiums.”
AFSCME issued a statement saying it intends to focus on promoting key elements of the House bill “to strengthen that body’s hand as the two bills are merged.”
“While the bill includes some important reforms,” the AFSCME statement read, “it has significant flaws. The Senate also dropped a public health insurance option, and was forced to cave into pressure from Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Ind., Conn., and reject a compromise proposal to allow individuals aged 55-64 to buy into Medicare with federal subsidies.”
Photo: AP Photo/Toby Talbot Health care rally at the University of Vermont campus in Burlington, March 17
