America’s Health Care Anxiety: CWA Leading Aggressive Campaign for Reform by 2012

Anxiety and worry about health care is no longer limited to those who don't have insurance.

Even people with good health care benefits — like those of us in CWA — worry what will happen when they retire, or what happens in the next round of bargaining if their company goes bankrupt.

"Our health care system, the broken, grossly inadequate system that is failing so many millions of people will eventually fail us, too," CWA President Larry Cohen said. "It is not sustainable; the costs are out of control — $2 trillion a year and growing. Every time we sit down at a bargaining table and manage to maintain our members' health care or lessen the damage that an employer wants to do, we have to give something somewhere else."

The bottom line, he said, is this: "Until basic health care coverage is a right for all Americans and not a bargaining chip for union members and employers, it's going to affect our ability to hold the line against deep health care concessions as well as to negotiate better wages and working conditions."

Together with leaders of the United Steelworkers and the Autoworkers, CWA is launching nothing less than a health care revolution. While the details are still being worked out, the timeline is set and the principles are uncompromising (see box this page).

CWA's Health Care for All campaign states the following mission: "This ambitious and critical campaign sets out to train five percent of CWA's membership (20,000) on the current state of health care in our country, and the need for the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (to strengthen the bargaining power of workers) and real health care reform. The campaign will build a political structure in every district, 40 states and 114 congressional districts and 17 battleground states to mobilize our members, and drive a political solution for health care and passage of the Employee Free Choice Act."

Step one is electing candidates to the White House and Congress in November who are committed to real health care reform. Step two is getting the Employee Free Choice Act passed in 2009 and health care legislation enacted by 2010. Step three is getting the new health care system up and running by 2012.

The basic premise is this: Of the $2 trillion spent on health care in the United States each year, roughly $800 billion comes from the government. The other half comes from employers, who spend about $500 billion, and consumers, who spend $600 billion out of pocket. Of those billions, about 15 percent goes toward administrative costs — nearly twice the percentage in Canada.

Employers are, in effect, paying a $500 billion "jobs tax" that supports an inefficient system. Health Care for All advocates broad-based funding that would cover all Americans for no more — and likely less — than the $2 trillion the country is spending now.

Key to the plan will be support from employers, and CWA believes that at least some of them are ready for change. Some telecom companies, for example, pay as much as $22,000 a year for pre-Medicare retiree family coverage. One problem is that many spouses with their own jobs, or retirees who get new jobs, opt-out of their employers' health care plans — and sometimes get a bonus for it. That means a shrinking number of companies and public employers with quality family plans are getting soaked.

A new army of CWA health care activists, who were trained at a February conference, are already taking the message of health care reform to locals across the country. One of their big jobs, trainers told them, will be debunking myths and providing the facts about what Americans will face if we do nothing.

Annie Hill, vice president for CWA District 7, told the 140 participants that Americans want to believe that their health care system — as is — is the best the world has to offer. While it is the most expensive system by far, global studies rate the United States well behind other developed nations on quality of care and infant mortality.

She stressed that the health care campaign will in no way affect the determination CWA brings to the contract negotiations. "When we sit down at the bargaining table, we're going to do everything we can to bargain better health care for our members," Hill said. "It's just getting harder and harder to do. We know ultimately that we need a national solution."

Learn more at:  www.healthcarevoices.org