Cohen on Health Care Panel: ‘Health Care Crisis Demands Strategies, Not Tactics’

The agreement with the Auto Workers to fund retiree health benefits at General Motors through an independent trust known as a VEBA was an acceptable option in a bad situation, but is not a long-term solution to covering retiree health care, CWA President Larry Cohen said during a panel discussion before some 200 health care policy experts in Washington, D.C., in January.

"We would say that a VEBA is a tactic, not a strategy," Cohen told the audience at the Center for American Progress. "The strategy has got to be health care for all Americans."

Cohen noted that the GM-UAW agreement included $15 million from GM to create a National Institute for Health Care to study the issue and suggest solutions, and he praised the parties for their commitment to comprehensive reform.

The forum brought together key participants and experts who can help make comprehensive health care a reality: (in addition to Cohen) GM's executive director for health care and federal policy; the president of the health insurance industry's top association; former U.S. Representative Barbara Kennelly, who heads the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, and policy experts.

The discussion focused on the growing crisis involving retirees under age 65 who don't have — or could lose — employer-paid health insurance and are years away from qualifying for Medicare. They are the proverbial "canary in the coal mine" for the U.S. health care crisis, said Jeanne Lambrew, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

"CWA has been working on this for 10 years," Cohen said. "We need a collective approach and a collective strategy. We need to create a social and political movement in this country to deal with health care, and that's what we're doing."

Cohen said his preferred strategy is "health care for all Americans," and he called for study and consideration of a broad-based tax to substitute for what employers already are spending on health care.

"Of $2 trillion spent on health care each year in this country, employers pay one third of the cost," Cohen said.  He added that the United States has higher health care administrative costs (15 percent) than other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, where such costs are 1 percent. Paris-based OECD is an international organization that addresses economic, social and governance challenges in the global world.  It includes 30 countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, Germany, France, United Kingdom and the Slovak Republic.

"We must look at the global perspective with confidence and not fear," Cohen said. "We must look at their health care policy and what they are doing."

More information about the forum and the speakers is available online at www.americanprogress.org.