The Capital Times
Madison, WI.
March 6, 2007
The AFL-CIO executive board is this week considering where the labor movement as a whole should line up on health care, which Americans tell pollsters is their No. 1 domestic policy concern. Hopefully, the labor leaders who gather in Las Vegas starting today will follow the lead of the Wisconsin AFL-CIO and go for the bold.
Wisconsin’s state labor federation backs the United States National Health Insurance Act (HR 676), which would establish a single-payer health insurance system with guaranteed coverage for all Americans. Sponsored by U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., the act would create a publicly financed, privately delivered health care system by expanding access to the existing Medicare program to all U.S. residents.
Advocates say the goal of the legislation is to ensure that all Americans, regardless of employment, income or health care status, will have a legal guarantee for access to the highest quality and most cost-effective health care services.
Honest measures, from Canada and other developed nations, suggest that a single-payer system is superior to the current U.S. system, which fails to cover 47 million Americans and provides inadequate coverage to a similar number of their fellow citizens.
But Americans do not need to borrow a plan from Canada or elsewhere. As supporters of HR 676 remind us: America already has a great single-payer system, Medicare. It simply needs to be expanded.
In addition to Wisconsin’s federation of labor, state federations in 16 other states have backed HR 676. So too have 63 regional labor councils and hundreds of local unions. Four international unions, including the United Auto Workers, an important player in Wisconsin, have joined the call.
Under Wisconsin AFL-CIO President David Newby, our state federation has been a leader for real health care reform.
Now the national AFL-CIO must become a leader on these issues.
It should do so not for reasons of symbolism or rhetoric. It should do so because, with an election year coming, Democratic candidates for president will be angling for the AFL-CIO endorsement.
The AFL-CIO should sign on for a single-payer system. Then the national federation should in combination with state and local union leaders make it abundantly clear to New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards and others pursuing the Democratic nomination that it is impossible to seek the presidency as a champion of labor without embracing HR 676 and campaigning on a promise to stop tinkering around the edges of the health care crisis and address it head-on.
When he was speaking vaguely the other day about the need for fundamental reform of our health care system, Obama said, “We can’t afford another disappointing charade in 2008, 2009 and 2010. It’s not only tiresome, it’s wrong.”
That’s right. But even Obama has failed to take a bold stand in favor of single-payer.
Labor needs to show Obama the way, just as it must similarly aid Clinton, Edwards and the others in the race for the presidency. The Democratic nominee for president in 2008 must offer us the promise of real reform not just rhetoric. And labor can make that happen.
