SINGLE-PAYER GOVT. HEALTH CARE BILL GAINS UNION BACKERS AS ‘COVER THE UNINSURED’ WEEK RUNS
By Press Associates, Inc. Staff Writer Mark Gruenberg
WASHINGTON (PAI) – A bill establishing a government-run Canadian style single-payer health care system for the U.S., built on Medicare, is gaining union backers, coincidentally as “Cover the Uninsured” week ran from May 1-7. The measure, H.R. 676 by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), would eliminate the private for-profit health insurance industry by establishing a government-run system.
The “United States National Health Insurance Act” would be funded through the federal budget, says a fact sheet from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which covers health issues and which sponsors the week spotlighting the uninsured.
Momentum for Conyers’ bill – plus the week-long observance and a planned Senate debate the same time on health care issues – comes just after the Massachusetts legislature voted to require every state resident to buy insurance.
GOP Gov. Mitt Romney, who plans to seek his party’s presidential nomination, signed the bill, but used his line-item veto to ax its provisions that required corporations to pay their fair share of health care bills. That prompted AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney to say “it is simply ridiculous” for Romney to “try to solve Massachusetts’ health care problems by dumping them on the backs of working people.”
“An individual mandate to buy insurance can only work if it is paired with a guarantee of affordable, comprehensive coverage, and the legislation falls dangerously short of that goal,” Sweeney added. He said the result is that a single worker earning $28,000 a year would have to pay $350 a month – or 15 percent of pre-tax income – for health care. Health care now takes slightly more than one-sixth of U.S. gross domestic product – the measurement of the value of all goods and services in the country.
Other health care advocates in the Bay State point to a proposed universal health care state constitutional amendment, to be discussed at a May 10 conference.
The latest backers of Conyers’ bill were the Ohio legislative board of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen/IBT, Letter Carriers Branch 3126 of Royal Oak, Mich., and Graphic Communications Conference/IBT Web Pressmen’s Local 4N of San Francisco. The Ohio BLET said it will take the cause to its conference convention in June and – if it wins – to the Teamsters convention immediately afterwards.
Their endorsements, in late April, came just after that of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, on April 6, after lobbying by USW Local 3567 member Janet Hill, who is also secretary of the Pittsburgh-area Coalition of Labor Union Women. Both the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia CLUW chapters had earlier endorsed Conyers’ legislation.
The Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, which claims 900,000 members, is the second state fed to back H.R. 676, after Kentucky’s. Conyers also has 68 U.S. House co-sponsors.
And Amalgamated Transit Union Local 825, which represents bus drivers, mechanics and other workers at New Jersey Transit, also voted to ask its parent international to back Conyers’ bill.
“We believe this is a very important program and we urge our international executive board to consider endorsing HR 676,” Local 825 President Muhsin Rasuul wrote ATU President Warren S. George about the localĀfs executive board and membership endorsements of the legislation.
But Conyers’ bill may not see the light of day in the GOP-run Congress, which instead is considering legislation – in the Senate – that would supposedly help small businesses band together to get health insurance.
In reality, the AFL-CIO said, that measure, pushed by the so-called National Federation of Independent Business – a key section of the ruling Republicans’ Right-Wing coalition – could raise the premiums on people who are insured and increase the number of the uninsured, now 46 million.
ItĀfs those uninsured people who are the focus of the week-long “Cover The Uninsured” drive, with the backing of the AFL-CIO, SEIU, several health care groups and even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. But while the groups all agree there is a health care coverage problem, they are silent on how to solve it.
Conyers’ bill would mandate comprehensive coverage of “all medically necessary services”: primary care and prevention, inpatient and outpatient care, long term care, emergency care, mental health services, prescription drugs, durable medical equip-ment, full dental services (except cosmetic dentistry), substance abuse treatment, chiropractic services and basic vision care and vision correction, the summary says.
“No cost-sharing would be imposed and benefits would only be available from public or non-profit providers,” it adds. “Non-profit HMOs that deliver care in their own facilities and employ clinicians on a salaried basis could participate.”
And there would be no insurance premiums.
Hospitals and nursing homes would get monthly lump-sum payments while doctors and nurses would get fee-for-service payments under a negotiated fee schedule based initially on current prevailing fees or reimbursement, the foundation says.
Data from AmericaĀfs Agenda: Health Care For All, a group headed by former UFCW President Doug Dority, shows health insurance premiums rose 60 percent since the year 2000, but “the proportion of premiums that insurers paid out for medical costs declined” in the same time.
The money went into insurers’ profits and claims processing – paperwork. Other data shows private insurers spend approximately one-fifth of their revenue on overhead, including processing. Medicare – the basis for Conyers’ bill – spends three percent.
