W Post: For unions, a messy bargain (health care)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/inbox/story/1397696.html

Posted on Thursday, 12.24.09

BY HAROLD MEYERSON
www.washpost.com

The Net roots is up in arms about the Senate's version of health-care reform, with many rooters demanding it be voted down. The liberal establishmentarians lament the compromises they were compelled to accept but support the bill's passage. In between the two, indignant and stuck, is organized labor.

``There's an excise tax on policies, but there's no public option to hold down the cost of those policies,'' says Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers. ``There's no Medicare buy-in, no pay-or-play mandate for employers. There's no Canadian reimportation to hold down drug costs, on the grounds of `safety.' No one gets sick from Canadian reimported drugs,'' adds Gerard, who is Canadian. ``I know a guy who got sick from a Chinese-made ingredient in an American drug, but there's no restriction on Chinese drug imports.''

Gerard is hardly alone in his criticisms. Labor believes, rightly, that the cost controls in the Senate bill come chiefly from insurance policy holders (among them, labor's members), rather than from insurance and drug companies. Both the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union have condemned these provisions, while hailing the bill's epochal creation of affordable health insurance for 30 million Americans. They're careful, too, to exempt President Obama from their criticisms.

``I'm not blaming the president,'' says Gerard. ``He wants to believe people will do the right thing.''

The unions have few illusions that the public option will be restored in the House-Senate conference committee, but they are working to promote the chief funding mechanism in the House bill (a tax hike on individuals with incomes over $500,000 and couples with incomes over $1 million) over that in the Senate bill (a tax that, to start, will fall on health insurance policies that cost more than $23,000 for a family of four). With medical costs unchecked by a public option and drug reimportation, they fear that the value of their members' policies will rise above the threshold by the middle of the next decade.

There's a political problem as well. During the fall of 2008, the unions spent millions persuading older working-class whites to vote their pocketbooks instead of their prejudices in such key swing states as Pennsylvania and Ohio. Just about the only issue that moved these voters from John McCain's column to Barack Obama's, they discovered, was that McCain supported taxing their members' health insurance and Obama didn't. ``We negotiate and fight hard for our health-care benefits,'' said one widely distributed piece of AFL-CIO literature. ``Now, Republican John McCain wants to tax them.''

FULL story at link.

[endless october]

1. it's a lose-lose for unions.

almost all of their health plans will be considered "Cadillac" plans, whatever the fuck that means.

essentially : "thanks for the support, guys. here's a nice kick in the ass for you. and oh, BTW, we're choosing China to make a lot more stuff for us. kthxbye"

[rudy23]

2. The same people who gave us NAFTA are helping to shape this bill

Shouldn't be a big surprise. The DLC wants to crush unions.