By Gregory Lopes
Washington Times
March 23, 2007
America’s largest organized labor union is setting the stage for a campaign to reform the country’s health care system.
The AFL-CIO’s Working America, an affiliate of the union, this week set up the Web site: “Health Care Hustle.”
The site is a public forum for medical horror stories from the country’s health care system. “We’re getting hustled by powerful interests who don’t want to pay their fair share for real reform,” said Working America Director Karen Nussbaum.
The Web site already has 550 health care horror tales posted. The stories assess blame for health care hardships, whether it’s special-interest organizations such as the pharmaceutical lobby and insurance companies or the Bush administration.
At the end of the year, Working America will tally the “evildoers” in each story and create a media campaign targeted at that entity.
“We’re going to take the power of the people combined with the institutional power of the AFL-CIO and teach the evildoers a lesson. We think they will feel the pressure,” said Ms. Nussbaum.
The AFL-CIO is not part of a recent health care collaboration between the Service Employees International Union and corporate giants such as Wal-Mart. Ms. Nussbaum said that plan takes the wrong path to universal health care by shifting too many medical expenses to workers. Instead, she said a universal health care system must be built on the government-run Medicare program.
Using Web-based weapons is a new tactic for trade unions that, not long ago, were able to wield influence through numbers rather than technology. But federal statistics released this month show national union membership for 2006 at 12 percent of wage and salary workers, down from 12.5 percent in 2005 and 20.1 percent in 1983.