Labor Campaign Pushes Healthcare as a Human Right, Not a Business
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As most American progressives know, nearly every industrialized country in the world has a government-funded health care program—except the US. Not as many of us know, however, that in nearly all of those countries, organized labor was a central player in fighting for and defending those systems.
The unionists gathered over the weekend at the Labor Campaign for Single-Payer conference in Chicago argue that if universal health care is ever to be achieved in the US, labor must play a key role in pushing for it—which many have plans to do, particularly on the state level, in the near future
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Many activists are looking to Vermont as an example to follow. The Green Mountain State saw a successful campaign for single-payer that began in 2008. The fight was led by labor—not by a traditional union, but by the Vermont Workers Center, a community-based worker rights organization, who assembled a broad coalition including many unions that successfully pushed single-payer legislation around a “health care is a human right” framework.
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http://www.thenation.com/article/172353/labor-campaign-pushes-healthcare-human-right-not-business#