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CWA Turns Up the Heat on Health Care 8/24/09

Members of Congress continue to hold town hall meetings across the country, and CWA is actively involved. Last week, our members participated in meetings with Reps. Niki Tsongas and Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts; Mike Arcuri of New York; Rick Boucher of Virginia; Lincoln Davis of Tennessee; Steve Driehas of Ohio; Martin Heinrich of New Mexico; Chris Carney of Pennsylvania; and Henry Waxman and Jackie Speier of California.

CWA, working with Health Care for America Now, will be on the air soon in targeted congressional districts with a TV ad featuring a CWA member. Stay tuned for more details!

CWA has four priorities when it comes to health care reform. Any legislation that passes Congress must require employers to cover workers, cover pre-Medicare retirees, and provide a choice of a public or private plan. And it must not tax health care benefits.

Meanwhile, CWA also is actively involved in countering the misinformation that has been spread by opponents of health care reform. Last week President Obama held an online forum that provided great information on the strategy that will move us forward. Watch the archived video.

In addition, Media Matters has compiled a summary of the most common misinformation that’s out there and provided the simple facts to refute misconceptions. Check it out here.

Sarah Palin and “Obama’s death panel”8/12/09

Opponents of health reform are generating lies and distortions faster than we can correct them. We recently told you about [fact sheets where CWA separates truth from lies]. And here, with this posting, we start a “misinformation and disinformation” post category, to keep up with the latest misunderstandings, fibs and whoppers.

And there’s no better place to start than Sarah Palin’s Facebook posting of last week (link requires Facebook access).

Palin wrote, “The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.”

In this, Palin was embellishing a nasty piece of opposition fear-mongering that’s been out there, that the health reform bill would somehow give government bureaucrats the power to order euthanasia. Besides Palin, for example, a conservative group called 60 Plus is running tv ads which claim that under health reform, “The government, not doctors, will decide if older patients are worth the cost.”

The truth: There’s no death panel. There’s no provision for euthanasia in any of the health reform bills.

“It's just flat untrue. It's mean and it's a cruel distortion,” James Dao, a spokesman for AARP – a group which supports health reform but has not endorsed any of the current bills, told NPR.

What is true, Dao said, is that “The House bill includes a provision that would allow Medicare to pay doctors for taking the time to talk with their patients about the very difficult choices that people face at the end of their life about health care: What kind of interventions you might want in the case of a bad accident or debilitating illness. It would empower individuals to make the best possible health care choices for them and their families and allow doctors to provide their patients with this so that no one's guessing at the end of a person's life.”

Doctors can already talk to their patients about living wills, advanced directives, hospice care and other choices. The House bill would simply allow Medicare to pay the doctor for the time spent on such a conversation. No one would have to talk to their doctor if they didn’t want to, and the patient would still be free to decide what kind of treatment is wanted and not wanted.

Health Care: This August, the Heat Is On 8/12/09

Health care reform is advancing in Congress, and angry right-wingers – in some cases, with financial and organizational backing from the insurance industry – have embarked in an all-out effort to defeat reform. In Town Hall meetings across the country, opponents have hung a member of Congress in effigy, compared reform to socialism and even charged that “death panels” would result in our elderly loved ones being subjected to euthanasia.

But CWA members are fighting back! In congressional district after congressional district, we’re showing up, going toe to toe with opponents of reform and pointing out their misrepresentations.

One outrageous claim by opponents: that the bills currently before Congress would force our members out of their current insurance and into a public plan. The truth is, the proposals being considered build on the current system, so that employer-based health insurance would remain in place for the overwhelming majority of our nation’s workers, including CWA members. It is hard to keep up with the preposterous lies being spread by reform opponents, so check out www.healthcarevoices.org for the truth.

By the time Congress had left town for August recess, health care bills had passed three committees in the House and one committee in the Senate. When Congress returns after Labor Day, the House bills will go to the House Rules Committee, which will merge the proposals. And the lone committee still working on legislation – Senate Finance – could report a bill out during the month of September. It then would have to be reconciled with a bill already reported out of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP).

Even though Congress is in recess, many observers think that what happens during August – at in-district grassroots events such as Town Hall meetings – is the most important factor that will determine whether we get quality, affordable health care for all. That is why it is essential for CWA members’ voices to be heard – because health care can’t wait!

CWA Participates in Massive Call-In Day on Health Care 7/30/09

This week, working in conjunction with the AFL-CIO and the coalition Health Care for America NOW, CWA members by the thousands are calling their members of Congress and expressing support for H.R. 3200, which is the House version of quality, affordable health care for all.

CWA is supporting the House bill - which has cleared two key House committees and may clear the third  late this week - because it meets four key CWA demands:

• It requires all employers to pay for their workers' health care. This will make sure everyone gets covered, and it will level the playing field between responsible employers and those not currently providing coverage.
• It protects retirees. It makes significant improvements to Medicare and provides assistance to employers to help them continue to provide coverage for pre-Medicare retirees (55 to 64) who are very vulnerable.
• It includes a strong public health insurance plan option. This is essential to drive down costs, give people more choices and keep insurance companies honest.
• It does not tax workers health benefits. Instead, it funds expanded coverage through a modest surcharge on the wealthiest Americans.

This is but one point of entry for CWA members to urge Congress to pass health care reform. This battle will not end in a week or a month. We suspect it will continue into the fall, and we will be calling on our members to let their voices be heard. Health care can't wait - and we must pass a bill that contains our principles this year.

The Senate proposals unfortunately do not meet our goals.  The worst news is that the Senate Finance Committee is moving toward a proposal which will tax health care benefits.  It will be important during the August recess - when Senators are at home - to tell them taxing benefits is a bad idea.  Also missing from the Senate Finance Committee bill is employer pay or play provision which would force non-union, non-health care providing employers to either provide health care to their employees or pay for it.  The Senate HELP Committee would require only a token contribution from employers who do not offer health insurance to their workers.

March 11, 2009

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act says that workers who lost or lose their job between September 1, 2008 and December 31, 2009 as a result of the economic downturn would be eligible to receive a 65% subsidy towards their COBRA premium for up to 12 months. The COBRA subsidy is not retroactive.