By Mark Gruenberg
PAI Staff Writer
WASHINGTON (PAI)--Labor’s campaign for comprehensive universal affordable health racked up a preliminary win on Oct. 26 as congressional leaders inserted the “public option” -- the government-run plan to compete with the insurance companies -- into health care bills headed for debate.
That didn’t stop unions and their allies from pressing on in the health care fight, as AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka said the fed and Change To Win would jointly conduct a mass national “Day of Action Call-in” to Congress on health care on Nov. 5.
The key victory came in the Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., overrode the conservative Senate Finance Committee’s bill and inserted a public option plan into the legislation he and other leaders are drafting behind closed doors. The version he included, designed to appeal to some possible swing-vote Republicans, would let states opt out of the national public option plan.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., reiterated that her chamber’s bill -- a combination of three committee-passed measures earlier this year -- would also have a “public option,” with the only question being whether it would be the strongest possible option that would do the most to curb rising health care costs.
Health care is the top priority of both the Democratic Obama administration an the labor movement, with Trumka, in his Oct. 26 press conference again reiterating the three principles labor would use to judge any health care bill: Curbing rising costs while making insurance universal and affordable, enacting the public option to bring competition to the health insurance market, and not taxing workers’ health insurance.
The Finance Committee bill tackled the problem of how to pay the $900 billion 10-year cost of making care virtually universal, covering everyone except undocumented workers. That legislation proposes taxing health insurance policies worth more than $8,000 yearly to individuals and $21,000 yearly to families.
Trumka alternated between praising Reid for inserting the public option into the bill heading for Senate debate -- forcing anti-health care Republicans to come up with 60 senators to knock it out -- and fending off reporters’ attempts to get him to say labor was backing off its resistance to taxing workers’ health care plans.
He jokingly told one reporter that “If you want to tax the” gold-plated “Goldman-Sachs plan, that’s up to you.” One wire service reporter took that quip seriously.
“The best way to restrain health care costs is to have the public option,” Trumka declared. “If you don’t have it, you guarantee the insurance companies 40 million new customers” -- because most of the bills would order everyone to get health insurance -- “at their rates,” not the lower rates the government-run public option could command.
“The more potent the public option is, the more you create competition” with the insurers, he added.
The public option, thought dead after Right-Wing organized disruptions and riots against it during the August congressional recess, revived. Unions launched a counter-campaign for it, when non-partisan congressional auditors reported it would produce the most savings from rising health care costs and when the insurers released a skewed study opposing it. The industry lost credibility in Congress and the country.
But the idea of taxing workers’ benefits is still alive and that’s still a key cause -- and potential deal breaker -- for unions and their members.
“The American public doesn’t want a tax on health care,” Trumka said. “The latest polls show 70% oppose that.
“And it doesn’t make economic sense: “It’s not cost-effective. It will not lower the cost of health care, but it will lower the amount of health care people will get. The cost of heart surgery won’t go down, but the amount that everybody’s health plan will pay for it will go down.”
And while the middle class would pay taxes on their health care, the rich the insurance companies and business would get away scot-free, he stated.
AFSCME President Gerald McEntee, whose 1.4-million-member union represents tens of thousands of health care workers, agreed that Reid is producing an improved health care bill, compared to the Finance Committee’s plan.
“While the bill is by no means perfect, it is a significant improvement over the proposal crafted in the Finance Committee. Now we will work to improve the bill on the Senate floor and to pass a strong bill in the House,” he said.
Unions, McEntee added, still “support health care reform that includes a robust public option and an effective employer mandate, while eliminating taxes on middle class health plans. The American people are ready for Congress to finish this bill and make quality, affordable health care a reality for all Americans.”
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