Solidarity Magazine..
The Real Crisis
Cover the Uninsured Week focuses on health insurance problems

While Social Security garners the headlines and attention, the real crisis devastating American working families gets little attention on Capitol Hill — health care costs.

For unions at the bargaining table, no other issue is as challenging as health insurance costs. And indications are it will get worse. With health care costs rising at double-digit rates each year, employers are getting squeezed. And they turn around and shift costs onto workers or drop coverage altogether. In 2004 employer health care insurance premiums jumped an average of 11.2 percent — more than five times the rate of inflation.

“It’s very serious,” said Rick Klingenberg, vice president of amalgamated UAW Local 710 that represents 24 plants in the Kansas City, Mo., area. “When we’re negotiating, every nickel you get on the wage package is offset on the health care.”

According to Families USA, a nonprofit group working for affordable health care, premiums paid by workers from 2000 to 2004 rose nearly three times faster than average U.S. earnings. Three-fourths of small businesses in this country offer no health insurance at all.

Cover the Uninsured Week, May 1-8, focuses attention on this national disgrace. Today 45 million Americans under 65, including 8 million children, are uninsured. That’s one of every seven Americans. They come from every community, ethnic group and income level. And since 2000 their numbers have grown more than 5 million.

“The current health care crisis cannot be solved at the bargaining table,” said UAW President Ron Gettelfinger. “We need a national health care plan that can bring relief for the millions of workers who have no insurance coverage, and for those hit with higher deductibles, monthly premium sharing and rising co-pays.”

The problem grows worse each year as health care premiums soar, fewer companies offer health care for their workers, and unions lose ground holding down health care costs for workers and retirees. And while union workers have a better chance of having insurance, the number of workers with insurance coverage is dwindling. In 2003 more than eight in 10 uninsured came from working families —- 70 percent from families with one or more full-time workers and 12 percent from families with part-time workers. Only 19 percent of uninsured Americans came from unemployed families.

Even those with insurance aren’t immune from high medical bills. The Journal of Health Affairs recently reported that half of the 4 million U.S. bankruptcies filed last year were by people who faced high medical bills from a recent health problem. And 75.7 percent of them had health insurance at the onset of their bankrupting illness.

Lack of health insurance isn’t a saving, it’s a public cost. People with minor medical problems don’t seek treatment until they are big problems, often handled in super expensive emergency rooms. Then those costs are shifted onto others through higher insurance rates and tax-funded public programs.

A single-payer national insurance program would make a huge difference. At $6,200 per capita, Americans already pay more for health care than any other country, but we are the only major industrialized country with no national health insurance. Not only would a single-payer plan insure every worker, it wouldn’t cost any more than we already pay.

According to several studies, including one by Physicians for a National Health Plan, national health insurance would pay for itself by eliminating the high overhead and profits of the private insurance industry, and reducing marketing costs.

Doctors and hospitals would be relieved of paperwork costs from doing business with multiple insurers with different rules. Even the Congressional Budget Office and the General Accountability Office agree that national health insurance could save enough on bureaucracy to cover all Americans for what we’re now spending.

“We need to activate our members and make sure they understand what is at stake,” said Klingenberg.

Sandra Davis

How can you go on strike from your job and still get paid??

Job banks are a crime against any corporation. Period. The fact that the UAW EVER had the ***** to bargain such a thing is ludicrous. The gravy train has ended, and its time to pay the piper. The UAW is not the root of all GM's problems...but it sure as hell remains a rather large one.

Trade: ‘Free’ or fair?
CAFTA vote was ‘betrayal’ all around

Ron Gettelfinger called it a betrayal to workers, farmers and ordinary citizens in the United States and Central America.

The Central American Free Trade Agreement, better known as CAFTA, passed the House by a razor-thin vote of 217-215 just after midnight July 28.

“CAFTA, like NAFTA before it, protects the profits of the pharmaceutical industry, agribusiness and other multinational companies,” UAW President Gettelfinger said. “But it offers no meaningful protection for working men and women, family farmers, consumers or the environment.”

CAFTA is patterned closely on NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement between Mexico, Canada and the United States which took effect 11 years ago, promising increased jobs, prosperity and economic growth.

It didn’t turn out that way.

The U.S. trade deficit with Canada and Mexico has exploded from $9 billion in 1993 to more than $111 billion in 2004. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. manufacturing jobs have been lost, and there is fierce pressure to lower wages and benefits for those jobs that remain.

Mexico’s workers didn’t benefit, either. The buying power of the average Mexican worker’s wage has fallen since NAFTA went into effect, so fewer good-paying jobs in Mexico are available for the growing labor force. One result is the flow of immigrants to the United States from Mexico has doubled since 1994.

With CAFTA, if jobs in Mexico are moved to Central America, then Mexico, in turn, will compete for even more jobs in the United States.

The end result: a merciless competition to see who can perform the most productive labor for the lowest possible wage.

Short of the majority needed to approve CAFTA, GOP leaders used bare-knuckled tactics to buy votes – in addition to promises of help in campaign fund raising.

“CAFTA did not win on the merits,” said Gettelfinger. “The Republican House leadership had to hold the vote open and President Bush had to twist arms and load up the energy and transportation bills with pork-barrel projects to win the narrowest possible victory.”

But the Democratic vote against CAFTA was the most unified ever against a trade agreement. Rep. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, led the effort to round up votes against the deal, along with Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland.

“Although the final outcome was disappointing, the UAW and other unions can be proud of the campaign we waged against CAFTA,” Gettelfinger said.

Jennifer John

If I get laid off at the bank, if they decide tomorrow they need to expand operations they bring in someone new, train them, and send them on their way. Why the HELL does this have to be any different?