If any of these Democratic Senators vote for this, they'll be out in 2010

[IndianaGreen]

Health Care Kumbaya

by Jeff Crosby, Jul 9, 2009

The peasants are filing their pitchforks to a fine point in anticipation of an attack on the palace—and the target of their ire is not what we might have intended. At this critical moment in the health care debate, more than a few working folk are taking a suspicious look at the health care reform efforts of Senate Democrats, President Obama—and their own unions. A headline in my local newspaper, the Lynn Item, helped stir the tempest: “Obama Open to Taxing Benefits to Fund Reform.”

Vincent Panvani of the Sheet Metal Workers (SMWIA) warns:

If any of these Democratic Senators vote for this, they’ll be out in 2010, and it will be used against Obama….(Y)ou’re taxing the middle class.

Teamsters President James Hoffa calls taxing health care benefits “the poison pill that will kill reform.” The Laborers have attack ads at the ready. And Donna Smith, an organizer and legislative representative for the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC) notes that insurance companies continue discriminatory rates for older workers and ongoing rescissions of benefits—that is, targeting people with more than 1,400 medical conditions for “opposition research” investigations so their benefits can be cut off. “Ugly stuff,” she puts it. (At a health care forum in Lynn, Mass., last week, Rep. John Tierney reported that in congressional hearings he asked every insurance company if they would stop these viscous targeted rescissions—each one said “No.”)

<snip>

Funding health care reform has always been the fulcrum of the contest. The insurance companies, hospitals and drug companies become advocates of “reform” if and when it simply means a massive transfer of public funds into their hands. The American Hospital Association and American Health Care Plans spokespersons reneged on the promises to reduce costs they had announced at a much-hyped appearance with President Obama and SEIU’s hapless Andy Stern—just three days earlier! (Hey, “voluntary” controls worked with the banks and OSHA, right?)

Profits at the 10 largest public ally traded health insurance companies rose 428 percent between 2000 and 2007. And they intend to keep them climbing.

The “Massachusetts Plan,” which was condemned by the AFL-CIO when it was first passed, fits the “feed-the beast” mold. To say, as the sole union defenders of the Mass Plan in the state suggest, that the “Mass Plan does some good things but it just didn’t deal with costs” is like saying poison ivy is a pretty plant if it wasn’t poison. The Mass Plan is collapsing of its own financial weight. Its cost has doubled in two years to $1.3 billion. Debate here now centers on whether to eliminate dental care or eliminate coverage for certain groups of legal immigrants.

Which brings us back to the gathering peasants. There are three distinct groups of union members girding for revenge if the Republicans and conservative Democrats manage to cow Obama into taxing health care benefits. First are the single-payer advocates, who have argued from Day One that the only way to “reform” is to start by fighting for the best solution, not start from a dense compromise that will inevitably be moved toward the health care millionaires in the interest of “bipartisanship.”

Second are the conservative union members who have told me from the beginning that the inevitable outcome of the union campaign will be the “guv’mint” taxing the working stiff to pay for insurance for poor people. This is a successful formula right-wingers are using to drive a wedge between “working people” and “the poor.” The crisis of legitimacy of the government will worsen, the right-wingers will be the beneficiaries. Rush Limbaugh and the Fox crowd are drooling.

Finally, there is the large middle group that is just starting to pay attention—and they are focused on the Obama Taxing Our Benefits headlines mentioned above. A member of the Local 201 Legislative Committee who is talking one on one with our members, gathering letters to legislators on health care reform, reports the best motivator is: “Tell them not to tax our benefits!”

http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/07/09/health-care-kumbaya/#more-16109

[closeupready]

1. GHWB lost a re-election bid in part because he broke a campaign promise not to raise taxes.

Obama has now done the same thing, as he promised up and down and sideways that if you made less than $250,000 per year, your taxes would not go up one dime.

Well, they are going to go up, and primarily taxes will go up on those in the lower socio-economic classes.

[stray cat]

2. Why should I be taxed to pay to help someone else?

:sarcasm: Not that I can afford to pay more taxes by choice but isn't it progressive for us to contribute to the needs of all versus just ourselves. Otherwise we should vote Libertarian

[HuckleB]

13. Hmmm.

Oh, you progressives.

:)

[laughingliberal]

32. It's another tax on work. Just like Reagan raising payroll taxes so the rich could skate

Progressive would be to tax those who can most afford it. It's another hit on unions. Workers who negotiated for benefits and accepted lower wages or raises will now get punished. And organizations which raised our working class out of poverty lose a little more power. Add in the fact that it doesn't help the poor that much and it just isn't worth it. I am poor and the help in the bill for me is not a lot better than the nothing I have now. And, certainly, is not worth another hit to workers who have been taking it in the shorts for 30 years so the upper 1% can continue living the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Another transfer of the workers' money into the hands of the obscenely wealthy.

[Ildem09]

3. I think that sums it up

I STAND WITH LABOR because they are the base of the Democratic party. moreso than any other group lol even the other ones i belong to haha

[IndianaGreen]

5. Trumka: Senate Health Care Bill Must Change to Be Real Reform

Here is what AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka had to say a couple of days ago.

Trumka: Senate Health Care Bill Must Change to Be Real Reform

by Seth Michaels, Dec 17, 2009

The health care bill being considered by the U.S. Senate is inadequate and too tilted toward the insurance industry, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said today.

In recent days, as the Senate has debated health care reform, small numbers of senators have held health care hostage by threatening to block a vote. The new proposal by the Senate puts the interests of insurance companies—and senators who would rather look out for the insurance companies—ahead of real reform.

Trumka said the top priority now is to fight over the rest of the legislative process to fix the bill and make sure we can pass real health care reform:

The labor movement has been fighting for health care for nearly 100 years and we are not about to stop fighting now, when it really matters. But for this health care bill to be worthy of the support of working men and women, substantial changes must be made. The AFL-CIO intends to fight on behalf of all working families to make those changes and win health care reform that is deserving of the name.

The absolute refusal of Republicans in the Senate to support health care reform and the hijacking of the bill by defenders of the insurance industry have brought us a Senate bill that is inadequate: It is too kind to the insurance industry.

Genuine health care reform must bring down health costs, hold insurance companies accountable, assure that Americans can get the health care they need and be financed fairly.

While the Senate’s bill makes a lot of important and necessary changes to our health care system, it falls short in three key areas, Trumka says.

• It lacks a public health insurance option, to offer real competition to insurance companies to bring down costs.
• It fails to make sure employers take responsibility and pay their fair share.
• It’s funded through a new tax on working families’ health care benefits.

http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/12/17/trumka-senate-health-care-bill-must-change-to-be-real-reform/

[bonnieS]

49. the fourth group is women

We are not thrilled giving up our hard won right to choose abortion in order to go back to back alley abortions. Especially for this crap, but not no way no how.

[Laelth]

4. k&r for labor. n/t

Kill the bill.

Forcing people to buy insurance is no more the answer to a failed health care system than forcing people to buy houses is the solution to homelessness.

:dem:

-Laelth

[BzaDem]

6. Every SINGLE Democratic Senator will vote for this. n/t

[laughingliberal]

33. Yep! Money talks nt

[FBaggins]

48. I doubt it

Every one of them will vote to kill the filibuster, but half a dozen (give or take) of them will likely vote against the bill itself (to provide cover for next year's election).

[ixion]

7. this is an incredibly stupid move by the dems

and it's going to cost them at the ballot box.

[IndianaGreen]

9. They can always add a soda tax for good measure

If you are going to screw the pooch, might as well go in whole hog.

[patrice]

8. Mandates with no competition to control prices + Taxes, sure seems like political suicide to me.

[laughingliberal]

34. And taxes on the middle and working class, no less nt

[AzDar]

10. If this bill passes, it will become the paper they bury the Democratic Party in.

Like rotten, stinking fish...

[slipslidingaway]

11. knr n/t

[Jamastiene]

12. 2008 was the last time I held my nose to vote for questionable Democrats.

From now on, I'm writing the right candidate in for primaries and sitting out the general if no one good wins the nod. I don't even care any more. I have nothing left to lose.

[HuckleB]

15. If McCain had won, we would have lost a lot.

But don't let that bother you.

[Jamastiene]

22. I honestly don't know how you can say that.

Currently, anything the Republicans want, they are getting it. In that case, it means it would be no different.

[HuckleB]

23. Apparently, you haven't read a newspaper during the past year.

:eyes:

[Jamastiene]

25. Yes, and I have had a home for the last year too.

If this bill passes, I'll be homeless. That affects me personally. I take it personally. Stay on your ivory tower and look down you nose at me though. Enjoy Republican rule forever starting in 2010. Thanks for nothing.

[HuckleB]

28. If this bill passes, you'll be homeless?

Prove it. Prove that you know enough about this bill to begin to make such a claim.

I am tired of the hyperbole. It's time for people to get their emotions in check, and start to look before they scream.

[treestar]

27. Just wow

Have you ever met a Republican?

[HuckleB]

31. It's as if Bush never happened.

[laughingliberal]

41. We have. And we've noticed they march in lockstep behind their

leaders no matter how disastrous their policies are.

[HuckleB]

42. Yup.

They do.

If you're trying to be ironic, you ought to try for something a little more subtle.

[treestar]

50. Then which way is it to be?

Repubics are praised for being tough and getting what they want and they march in lockstep.

Democrats are weak for not getting what they want. Do your realize to get what they want, Democrats would have to be in lockstep, Sanders must be in lockstep and so must Lieberman?

Why don't these progressives praise Lieberman to the skies for sticking to his principles and not marching in lockstep?


:wft:

[laughingliberal]

35. Ah, no thread would be complete without this false dichotomy showing up nt

[HuckleB]

38. Except that it's not false.

Especially in the face of the false notion that Obama hasn't done anything and/or is as bad as a Republican.

You can't have it both ways.

[laughingliberal]

39. There is a whole hell of a lot of territory between hasn't done anything right

and/or is as bad as a Republican and is endorsing a bill that is a big mistake. I can disagree with a position without going all the way to nothing right/bad as a Republican. This crap wouldn't even work in a high school debate class. And I can have it both ways. ie: preferable to McCain AND advocating for a health care bill that is a disaster for the middle and working class. Both those things can be and are true.

See how that works? Yes, he's better than McCain. And yes, the bill he's supporting is a disaster. Those two statements are not mutually exclusive.

[HuckleB]

40. So now you're pretending that the response was to you, when it wasn't.

And prove, with details, that this bill is a disaster for the middle and working class.

If you can't, then it appears that you haven't got it any way at all.

[laughingliberal]

43. Forgive me if I interrupted a private conversation

I suppose I could retype the OP as my support for my position that this bill is a disaster for the working and middle class but it's all there for the reading. Another tax on workers to give to the wealthy. Romney care for the country, only the policies which cover little will be even more expensive. Nothing to stop the insurance crime organizations from continuing some of their worst practices. The end of any hope of upward mobility for us chickens. As soon as you get a raise that takes you above 400% of the federal poverty level, you're on the hook for the full price of a policy that may be 25% or more of your income. How many years before you get back where you were when it was costing you 10%. And the premiums will continue to rise every year just as they are now. Did you miss the part where the AHA and AHCP have reneged on their agreements to bring costs down?

[HuckleB]

44. That's not the point.

The point is that you're going all over the place, following whatever illogical whim you want to follow to "defend" your response.

You clearly want to have it all ways. You can't. It's time to educate yourself on the concept of intellectual honesty.

As for me, I will waste no more time on you.

[laughingliberal]

45. Intellectual honesty? I am not the one that sets up false dichotomies and pretends they are real

debate. All of the points I made above are examples of how the bill is a disaster for working and middle class Americans.

[northernlights]

59. don't be too sure of that

I have no insurance, and I prefer to not have insurance since I get no healthcare either way. The only way I've *ever* gotten decent care was to pay out of pocket.

If McCain/Palin had won, I'd have known exactly where I stood a year ago, when it was not too late for me to run for the hills. Now I'm going under slowly with no way out, because I temporarily bought into some faint, vain hope for an end to the Bush era. McCain would have started war on Iran. Obama is gearing up for war on Venezuela. War for oil is war for oil, and at least Chavez has given oil to the poor up here, unlike *any* of the US companies. McCain just might have stopped the worst torture. Obama is just shipping it out of sight overseas. McCain would have increased privitization of war. Obama has accelerated privitization. McCain may have tried to privitize social security. It increasingly looks as though that will be next on Obama's agenda.

My only hope now is to dump my house soon and disappear. I really hate what this country has become.

[Thickasabrick]

14. Taxing the tanning bed places 10% should really help........

NOT!

Who uses a tanning bed anymore?

[northernlights]

60. Boehner? nt

[cali]

16. baloney. I can guarantee you that Pat Leahy will be re-elected in

a walk whether he votes for it or not, and with the huge amount of money Bernie secured for Community Health Centers in the state, he'll be voting for it.

[Synicus Maximus]

17. But president Obama needs a bill to sign, no matter how bad.

[rhett o rick]

18. LOL. Are you smokin the funny stuff again? How will this happen? You apparently live in a dream

world. The Democratic Party will be working against the peasants that have no organization. Ousting a incumbent Democrat is unheard of. Takes lots of money and no corporation will back your peasants revolt. Time to stop the dreaming and starting a movement. Get organized and develop a strategy. Peasants with pitchforks is a joke and counter productive.

YOu have to have candidates that are willing to buck the system. Where are you going to get them????? Where are you going to get candidates???

Good grief.

I wish you were right. I wish you luck.

[IndianaGreen]

19. Since the OP is an AFL-CIO article, you probably think that organized labour are idiots

There are a lot of union people in this country still.

[rhett o rick]

20. I am a strong union supporter and resent your implication otherwise.

My objection to the OP is in wording like: "If any of these Democratic Senators vote for this, they’ll be out in 2010". I would hope you would recognize that this statement is asinine. This statement says that 58 Democratic Senators will be ousted in 2010 even tho only about 20 will even be up for reelection. So plez tell me how these Senators are going to be replaced. Recall?? In fact none of them will be replaced. NONE. Incumbents are golden and dont get replaced. OH yes, maybe the peasants with their sharpened pitchforks will force them out.

Something needs to be done. Some of these Senators need to be replaced. But this type of talk is counter productive. We need a strategy (other than sharpening our pitchforks) to get these asshole out.

[Jamastiene]

24. Gee, I would think the AFL-CIO had some sway

when it comes to campaign endorsements. They are not the only ones. NOW is against this piece of shit legislation too. You'd think that would add up after more and more speak out against it. I don't think NOW or the AFL-CIO uses pitchforks when they disagree. I think they support the other guy in elections. That just miiiiiiight hold some sway.

I hope you are wrong.

[rhett o rick]

26. There are lots of us that would support "the other guy". Now explain to me how we get other guys

to run against incumbents. I wish we could, but not likely. Are you personally working to find these hero "other guys"?.

[varelse]

21. My two senators won't

I'm fairly confident that they'll both win in 2010 - if they run.

[Bluenorthwest]

30. Senators do not run in the same year

so your confidence is interesting.

[varelse]

36. True: Feinstein is in no danger - not running

Boxer is unlikely to be unseated.

[Divine Discontent]

47. so you know, only Congressional Representatives get voted on every election cycle - senators are in

groups of 3, if I remember correctly. So, you might have one running in '10, and another in '12, or '14. Senators serve 6 year terms, Representatives serve 2 year terms. Presidents 4 (sometimes very painful) years.

[varelse]

51. Yes, my mistake

neither of them is going anywhere in 2010, although only one is running in that election. I don't know if Feinstein intends to run in 2012.

[Divine Discontent]

53. I think she is running for gov.

[varelse]

55. Yeah, I 'd read that she was considering the run

but not that she'd made up her mind about it. I wonder who the Republicans would run against her.

[Divine Discontent]

57. I think it's ebay hack Meg Whitman - Mittens loves her, so probably her

hopefully Jerry Brown wins it.

[varelse]

58. He'll get my vote (nt)

[treestar]

29. No

It is very hard to get rid of Senators. Once in, their constituents keep voting them in. It is rare that they punish them for anything. They remember the name and forget everything they've ever done.

How did Lieberman get in as an independent? he was an incumbent, and that is why.

Even the ones with scandals get reelected.

The people are sheepish to a large degree. They were under Bush and they still are.

[laughingliberal]

37. So, even this does not bother us:

Donna Smith, an organizer and legislative representative for the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC) notes that insurance companies continue discriminatory rates for older workers and ongoing rescissions of benefits—that is, targeting people with more than 1,400 medical conditions for “opposition research” investigations so their benefits can be cut off. “Ugly stuff,” she puts it. (At a health care forum in Lynn, Mass., last week, Rep. John Tierney reported that in congressional hearings he asked every insurance company if they would stop these viscous targeted rescissions—each one said “No.”)

See anything disturbing there? Anything here that isn't quite what we think we've been promised about the end of insurance company abuses? Anything at all? Or is this what you thought you were getting?

[truedelphi]

61. All this is making some of us sick.

I also think it will beproven to be uncostitutional to force union members to pay taxes on their health plans.

When M. was in the Union, he paid 9 percent of his salary for health benefits. And his salary was taxed at full amount. So how can they do this? It is double taxation, isn't it?
Which is not legal...

[bertman]

46. Does that really say "Teamsters President James Hoffa"? I thought he was dead and gone.

Is that his son?

[Jakes Progress]

52. Note to unions.

You are welcome here with us here under the bus. But it is getting crowded. With this many people maybe we ought to have a party - a party of our own.

[mrs_p]

54. just one problem

how can some of them be out when they won't be up for reelection until 2014?

[joeunderdog]

56. Don't forget those corrupt voting machines.

They are locked and loaded, ready just in case the pols don't behave.