Website Gives CWA Members A Voice in Health Care Debate

Jammed with information about the country's health care crisis and possible solutions, a new CWA website makes it easier than ever for members to have a voice in the national health care debate.

CWA set up the site www.healthcarevoices.org as a way for union members to express their opinions about the health care system in the U.S., share their own stories of health care nightmares, ask questions of experts through online discussions, and learn more about the trends that are affecting union-negotiated health benefits.

The stories and ideas members share can be searched by Congressional district, making an easy packet of constituent information to send to or bring to meetings with members of Congress and their staffs.

A 42-year-old single mother from California wrote that, "I've never collected an unemployment check, I've always had a decent job and my credit score is 745. Yet how can it be that I'm nearly in bankruptcy due to the costs of health care? My daughter and I both have health concerns and we can't live any longer on my wage. We will be selling my home of 15 years and moving to a cheap apartment so I can pay my health care debts."

A contributor from Georgia says, "I received a new liver in 1992. The cost of a transplant without insurance: tens of thousands. The cost of meds: hundreds monthly. It is wonderful that science has allowed us to live longer but we will probably die worrying how we will foot the bill."

The site will also link members to information from the Citizens' Health Care Working Group, a Congressional project to involve all Americans in finding solutions. An interim report — based in part on an online poll that drew 15,000 responses, including 500 from CWA members — recommends some form of universal health care. Through resolutions, CWA convention delegates also have overwhelmingly supported health care for all. The Citizens Health Care report can be downloaded at CWA's Health Care Voices site.

Bringing ordinary people into the gridlocked debate was the bipartisan effort of Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). "We decided, let's try something else," Wyden told the Associated Press. "Let's go to the public and let them provide a kind of roadmap where the country ought to head."

The site will offer online question-and-answer sessions every month, possibly more often, with experts in the field. Transcripts from a series of discussions that took place in April and May are available at the site.