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News Brief

Date Posted: October 23 2009

Unions oppose Senate’s health bill

WASHINGTON (PAI) – A wide range of unions announced their vigorous opposition to a key Senate Finance Committee’s health care bill.

In full-page ads in 30 newspapers nationwide and in mobilizations that began Oct. 14 by numerous unions, including several from the building trades, the unionists said the legislation “is deeply flawed.”  The AFL-CIO and 26 unions signed the ad.

The ad demands “real health care reform — nothing less.”  It declares that “unless the bill that goes to the floor of the Senate makes substantial progress to address the concerns of working men and women, we will oppose it.”

The Senate panel’s bill dumps a key cause for unionists in health care reform: Creating a “public option,” a government-run competitor to the insurance companies and their high deductibles, high co-pays and denial of care.

The legislation passed 14-9 with one Republican, Maine’s Olympia Snowe, joining all the Democrats.  It also taxes many workers’ health insurance plans. With no public option and with taxing individuals’ health insurance, the bill is unacceptable, the AFL-CIO and the other unions said.

“A public health insurance option is essential to reform,” their ad said.  The public option would “lower premiums for everybody and reduce the cost of health reform by $100 billion.”  The Finance panel wrestled with how to pay the 10-year $1-trillion cost of health reform.

“Nothing less than a public option sets up competition to break the stranglehold of a handful of big insurance companies that have made 96% of metropolitan areas uncompetitive” in health insurance, the unions’ ad said.

California Nurses Association Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro called the Finance Committee bill “a stunning, massive bailout” for the health insurers, even after that lobby issued a suspect study on Oct.12 criticizing the legislation.

“Lawmakers should stop coddling a useless industry whose sole function is to make enormous profits from the pain and suffering of patients while providing little in return,” she added.