A Blueprint for Health Care Reform: Priority No. 1 - Employers Should Be Responsible For Covering Th

As every CWA member and retiree knows, health care is a major battle in every set of negotiations. Employers have responded to soaring health care costs by attempting to drop coverage, slash benefits and shift more costs onto workers.

CWA has been fighting back, in bargaining with AT&T and other telecom companies, with state and local governments trying to cut public worker benefits, and with the airline and newspaper industries.

"The health care crisis can't be solved at the bargaining table. That's why CWA is pressing our employers to take on a real leadership role in the fight for national health care reform. We have a President and majorities in Congress who agree that our broken system must be fixed now. It's time for responsible employers to get on board," said CWA President Larry Cohen.

Requiring all employers to either provide coverage or pay into a public fund would achieve several important CWA goals:

• It would build on the current system under which people are covered by their employers. 
  
  
• CWA members will be able to keep the health benefits and insurance plans that we have negotiated over the years. 
  
  
• All workers will be able to obtain affordable coverage. 
  
  
• It will end health care freeloading by employers that don't provide coverage and whose workers and dependents are covered by other employers. Currently, 36 million workers don't have health coverage through their own employers and 16 million of these are covered by their spouse or partner's employer. 
  
  
• It will reduce costs for employers that now provide health care coverage, and reduce the competitive disadvantage these employers now face. Covering the family members of employees costs employers an additional $31 billion a year.

Requiring all employers to participate by providing coverage or paying into a public fund also will dramatically reduce the number of uninsured Americans, lower health care premiums, cut costs for companies that already provide health care and stop the taxpayer subsidy of freeloading companies who push their workers and families onto Medicaid and other state programs.

WalMart, for example, covers 52 percent of its workforce. The remaining workers are uninsured, are covered by a public health plan like Medicaid or by a spouse or partner's company. And WalMart, No. 2 on the Fortune 500, tops the list of companies with the most employees enrolled in state-funded health care programs in every one of 24 states that collect data on health care coverage, according to WalMart Watch.