,
20 tweets,
6 min read
Read on Twitter
In the past few days, some presidential candidates have suggested you can have Medicare for All or you can stick with labor — you can’t have both. Historically, labor’s position has been to remove healthcare from bargaining through a national health insurance program. Examples:
1/ Reuther, UAW: “For more than thirty years I have had the responsibility (together with my colleagues) in the UAW of sitting at the bargaining table and facing the largest corporations in the world. In the past ten years, we have placed increased emphasis upon health care...”
2/ “... services and benefits in our negotiations. In those ten years we have negotiated approximately $2.25 billion for health care services for UAW members and their families. It is our judgment, however, that the increased economic resources we are committing to health care..”
3/ “..are not yielding comparable improvements in either the scope or the quality of the health care we are receiving for our hard earned consumer dollars. Therefore, we cannot escape the conclusion that, in America, UAW members and consumers of health care generally are being..”
4/ “...asked to provide increased resources to subsidize built-in waste and inefficiency in an obsolete, nonworkable nonsystem” (1969).
5/ NYTimes: “National health insurance, a compulsory system that would be financed by employer and employee taxes as well as general Federal revenues, had already been endorsed by four unions not affiliated with the A.F.L.‐C.I.O.: the Auto Workers, the Teamsters, the United...”
6/ “...Mine Workers and the International Chemical Workers.The labor federation, which last year lent its support to a form of national health insurance proposed by Representative Martha W. Griffiths, Democrat of Michigan, announced its support for the Reuther concept at a...”
7/ “... news conference in the Congressional Hotel today. The Reuther and Griffiths plans were basically the same, although they differed somewhat on financing and extent of coverage. Both George Meany, the head of the A.F.L.‐C.I.O., and Leonard Woodcock...”
8/ “... who replaced Mr. Reuther as U.A.W. Chief, have supported the proposal that will be introduced in the House of Representatives tomorrow.”
9/ @FlyingWithSara: “...Every single time we go to the table, the company comes with proposals to shift healthcare costs to workers or degrade coverage. It’s a win when we keep what we have. @BernieSanders knows we have to ensure healthcare is reformed to provide care for all...”
10/ Chris Shelton, CWA (2017): “Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All legislation sets the stage for a health care system that finally would make good health care available and affordable for every American...”
11/ “...CWA long has supported an overhaul of our health care system and a ‘single payer’ plan that would provide universal coverage. The Medicare for All Act is one opportunity to do just that.”
12/ Mother Jones (1979): “Not withstanding his rabid anti-Communism, Kirkland has been surprisingly vigorous in pressing legislation that transcends narrow labor interests - full employment, national health insurance, civil rights, etc,.”
13/ William Winpisinger (1982): "I think we need to put in place a national health service to get away from being one of the last countries in the industrialized, free world at least that doesn't have one. Most of the other kinds of countries have one too."
14 / Before continuing, @FlyingWithSara is absolutely right. “What we legislate, we don’t have to negotiate.” If people would like to learn more about different unions, like @afa_cwa, and their approaches to organizing, check out my primer @PplPolicyProj. peoplespolicyproject.org/2019/07/09/a-p…
15 / Leo Gerard of @steelworkers, (2019) "With a single-payer system like Medicare for All, every American would have the safety and security of health insurance. Prices overall would decline as overhead costs charged by private insurers disappeared...”
16 / “... And, crucially, Congress could allow Medicare to bargain for lower pharmaceutical prices, as is done by Canada and other countries with universal health insurance.”
17 / These are just a few of the unions who have endorsed @BernieSanders Medicare for All bill. The Amalgamated Transit Union, the American Federation Of Teachers, @MachinistsUnion, the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, the NEA,...
18/ More unions who have endorsed @BernieSanders’ Medicare for All bill: National Nurses United, SEIU, United Electrical and Machine Workers, and the @MineWorkers.
18 / @SEIU’s @MaryKayHenry told @josheidelson: “she was ‘enraged’ by how Medicare For All was pitted in last night's debate against union members' existing plans, and ‘the idea that something will be taken away is the sort of bogeyman’ used in prior healthcare fight...”
