Attention
	"Join the fight for universal health care" Click here for coupon

By LILLIAN ROBERTS
Executive Director
District Council 37, AFSCME

I cut my teeth as a union activist when I was a young Nurse’s Aide in Chicago. One of my proudest moments was leading the organizing drive in the public hospitals in the 1960s that established DC 37 as the premier municipal union in New York City. So, health care is an issue I am particularly passionate about. And right now, our system is an economic mess and a human crisis.

As an advocate for poor and working families, I see health care as a right, not a business product to produce profits. I believe it is scandalous that we are the only country in the industrialized world that doesn’t offer free health care to its citizens.

Canada spends half as much per person as the United States on health care, but our infant mortality rate is higher and our life expectancy is shorter. Last year, Toyota cited health costs as one reason it is putting a new plant and thousands of jobs in Canada, which has national health care, rather than in Tennessee.

The soaring cost of health care cripples companies in the private sector, busts budgets in the public sector, and undermines collective bargaining for unions — while 45 million Americans are left out in the cold with no health coverage at all.

Prescription drug firms get away with charging far more here than in other countries for the same medications. They make the nation’s highest profits while their outrageous prices put the squeeze on union members’ benefits and leave others to choose between medicine and food.

It’s time we demand that our policymakers give us a simple, national health plan that covers everyone and controls the prices of vital prescription drugs. A national health plan would remove health care from the bargaining table, provide financial relief to cities and free up funds to boost salaries and improve services.

In health care, the profit motive creates waste. The New York Times recently pointed out that many private plans refuse to pay $150 for preventive care of diabetic foot ailments, yet they cover amputations, which cost $30,000. The quest for enormous profits has no place in caregiving. One-third of U.S. health care spending goes to huge insurance companies. Without them, we would be well on our way to a health-care system that works for patients’ needs rather than corporate greed.

Quality health care — and savings, too
The administrative cost of Social Security is only 1 percent. Our Health and Hospitals Corp. institutions — staffed by DC 37 members — have been cited by national accreditation agencies for their top quality care. A well designed government program could deliver superior health care to all Americans for less than the private sector.

The skyrocketing cost of prescription drugs eats away at union benefits and attacks the living standards of seniors. The Bush administration’s new Medicare Part D drug plan is inadequate and mired in confusion. Worse, to please Bush’s friends in the pharmaceutical industry, the Republican legislation actually bans the government from controlling high drug prices.

Without controlling prices, I don’t see how most seniors or our union benefit plan can ever escape the financial vice of the pharmaceutical industry. In World War II, price controls prevented profiteering on gasoline, sugar and meat. Are prescription drugs less essential to our quality of life today?

Unions like ours must take the lead in the struggle for national health insurance and drug price controls. We should work with a coalition of progressive politicians, forward-looking employers, community and faith-based organizations to catapult these issues to the top of our country’s political agenda.

We have to send Washington a message: Our health is too important to leave to the current failing system. If you want to be part of the fight for an equitable, economical, universal health care system, send me the coupon below. I am planning to personally deliver these messages to our state’s delegation in Congress.