CWA: No Excise Tax on Health Care

CWA health care activists meet with President Cohen before heading to Capitol Hill for appointments with members of Congress.

CWA members are making tens of thousands of phone calls to Capitol Hill from worksites, homes and union halls to make sure senators get the message: Don't tax workers' health care.

Over the past few weeks, CWA members have made nearly 40,000 calls, and those efforts will intensify as the Senate works to combine bills passed by the Senate HELP Committee and Senate Finance Committee, said CWA Executive Vice President Annie Hill. Wednesday, Oct. 28 is the next "National Call-In Day" and CWAers will be organizing phone-ins at worksites and other locations. CWA members also can follow the debate and CWA's calls for action on Facebook and Twitter; key word CWAHealthCare.

The Senate Finance Committee version of health care reform includes a tax on health care plans that would hit working and middle class families hard and does nothing to make companies that are now health care "freeloaders" pay their fair share.

"It's absurd to make those employers who already provide health care coverage pay even more. Instead, employers that don't cover their workers need to pay," said CWA President Larry Cohen. The excise tax will lead to even more cost-shifting to workers, he added.

A new Washington Post/ABC poll finds that 61 percent of Americans oppose the tax on health care plans and "shows what we have known all along: The public does not support a middle class tax to fund health care reform when there are plenty of other progressive alternatives" including an 8 percent payroll tax levied on employers that don't provide health care coverage to workers and a rollback of some tax breaks given to the wealthiest Americans during the Bush administration.

Read CWA's analysis of the excise tax and its devastating effects on CWAers and working families.