|
BACKGROUND
The health care "system" in the United States continues to deteriorate. It is essentially a health-care system that
rations care by your ability to pay for it. Working people are forced to pay more and more for private insurance coverage which
covers less and less. Costs are getting higher, satisfaction is sinking lower. Every UE member is faced with this health care
crisis directly at the bargaining table, in both the private and public sectors. A growing number of local and national strikes
are caused by bosses attempting to push the enormous and growing health care costs onto the backs of union members. Unorganized
workers are forced to pay up or lose all coverage.
As many as 44 million Americans lack any health care coverage, and millions more are woefully under-insured. Adding insult to
injury, unpaid medical bills remain the largest single trigger of individual bankruptcy proceedings. The push for real national
health insurance reform peaked with the ill-fated Clinton plan promoted back in 1993 and 1994. President Clinton watered-down
his reform plan until it was finally destroyed by the health insurance companies and the Republican Party in the 1994 elections.
Since then, national health care reform has been on a political back-burner, even while the crisis continues to expand and
worsen.
CURRENT STATUS
The introduction of the U.S. National Health Insurance Act (HR676) has helped revive and unify those forces
promoting a real solution to the crisis. The legislation was introduced late last year, and is slowly gathering co-sponsors and
political momentum.
UE POSITION
Our union has supported the creation of a national health insurance program for many decades. UE supports a
national "single-payer" health care program that would eliminate the private health insurance companies completely. The
new national health care agency would become the single-payer of medical and hospital bills. Everyone in our country would be
covered, regardless of employment status or age. The funds for the new system would come from a payroll tax on employers, and
small out-of-pocket contributions by individuals. For additional information, please take the time now to review the attached
article from the February 2004 UE News entitled "No More Band-Aid Approaches" and the brief summary of the U.S.
National Health Insurance Act (HR676.)
FAST FACTS
- Forty-four million people lack any health insurance.
- Millions of working people simply cannot afford health insurance premiums any more.
- Unpaid medical bills account for a majority of personal bankruptcy filings.
- Every industrialized country except the United States provides for some kind of national health- care "safety
net."
- During the course of a year almost 75 million people will lack health care coverage for some period.
- Health-care spending in the United States is greater than any other industrialized country, and continues to escalate at
three to four times the rate of inflation.
- We already pay for national health care we just dont get it!
Top
of Page Home
-> Political Action -> Issues Briefing
|
