Unions, allies to rally in Washington for health care

[Omaha Steve]

http://transitional.pww.org/article/view/16077/

Author: Mark Gruenberg
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 06/19/09 16:41

WASHINGTON (PAI)--There’s a mass march on Washington for health care, after all, on June 25.

Unionists from around the country are set to descend that day on the nation’s Capital to demand universal, quality, affordable health care with cost controls and choice of doctors -- and to insist that Congress not pay for it by taxing workers’ health benefits.

If lawmakers impose that tax, says one union president, the Laborers’ Terry O’Sullivan, unionists -- both members and organizations -- will turn against the bill. He calls taxing workers’ benefits “dead on arrival.”

The unionists will be led by the Communications Workers, as 2,500 delegates to the union’s legislative conference and its subsequent convention will be in town. The health care lobbying follows a mass rally that starts at 11:30 a.m., on June 25.

The unionists will lobby lawmakers as Congress slogs through the heavy lifting of writing legislation to revamp the nation’s dysfunctional health care non-system. The big issues in dispute are whether to establish a public Medicare-like health plan to compete with the private insurers and keep them honest, and how to pay for the overhaul.

Health care now takes one of every six dollars of national output, some $2.3 trillion, but it leaves 47 million people uninsured, that same number underinsured, lets the insurers pocket at least 20 percent of the money for overhead, profits and high CEO pay, and routinely denies paid-for care, killing 101,000 people, data show.


FULL story at link.