High Health Care Costs Eat into Union Bargaining

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/04/01/high-health-care-costs-eat-into-union-bargaining/

by Mike Hall, Apr 1, 2008

Leon in South Dakota says that the health insurance his union bargained for with his employer saved his life.



But with the non-stop, skyrocketing costs of health care, Kyle in Michigan says it is getting harder and harder for workers and their unions to maintain that kind of life-saving, employer-provided coverage.


Teresa in Washington State knows firsthand what increased health costs mean in her paycheck.


The three union workers are part of the 27,000 union and nonunion workers, insured and uninsured, old and young who took the AFL-CIO/Working America 2008 Health Care for America Survey. Like the three union workers, nearly 7,500 respondents shared stories about their personal experiences with the nation’s broken health care system.


Some 95 percent of the people who took the survey say the health care system in this country needs fundamental change or to be completely rebuilt.


Union workers are more likely to have employer-provided health coverage. In March 2007, 78 percent of union workers in the private sector had jobs with employer-provided health insurance, compared with only 49 percent of nonunion workers. That union advantage kept Leon alive:

I am fortunate in the fact that I have health insurance provided through a collective bargaining agreement. Even though I am now required to make a monthly contribution for that coverage. Annual exams are a routine part of my health maintenance. In 2007, my annual physical led to a CT Scan, which diagnosed the presence of a kidney tumor. I had no symptoms, which lead me or my physician to believe a kidney condition existed. Early detection led to the surgical removal of the tumor, which proved to be malignant and the retention of more than 90 percent of the affected kidney.


FULL story at link.

[msongs]

1. unions AND employers should all be working towards single payer - dump HMOs nt

[N4457S]

2. Haven't...

...we talked about this?

How do you get single payer for three hundred million people when it's the insurance companies who own the country?

How do you get health care period for three hundred million people when we're in the middle of a war that we borrowed money for and we can't afford the entitlements we already have?

You don't. At least, not in our lifetime. Obama knows this. So does Hillary. That's why she made the comment about having more ideas than the country has money. She knows the score. So does everyone in Washington.

It isn't a perfect world, but running around in circles and telling people we can do things for them which we know damn well we can't is just stupid.

It's not gonna happen and even the media knows it. That's why there hasn't been too much discussion of it lately. Reality is sinking in.