Unionists jam phone lines to lobby for healthcare

[Omaha Steve]

http://ilcaonline.org/content/unionists-jam-phone-lines-lobby-healthcare

Friday, November 6, 2009

WASHINGTON (PAI)--Marshaled by the AFL-CIO and Change To Win, unionists by the hundreds of thousands jammed congressional phone lines Nov. 5 to lobby lawmakers for comprehensive, universal and affordable health care.

The lobbying came as two other influential groups, the American Medical Association and the American Association of Retired Persons, joined labor in favoring HR 3962, the House health care bill. Lawmakers planned to vote on it on Nov. 7. The bill was expected to pass on a party-line vote, with all Republicans opposing it.

HR 3962 would cover all but a few million of the estimated 46 million uninsured, while curbing insurance company denial of care, cherry-picking of healthy members, and refusal to cover pre-existing conditions, among other things. The Harvard Medical School reported last month that 44,780 people die yearly due to no health insurance.

Using the fed’s toll-free line (1-877-3AFLCIO), unionists told lawmakers that HR 3962 isn’t perfect, but that it is far superior to health care legislation in the Senate.

“I think we’ll have health care this year,” Change To Win Chair Anna Burger predicted at a Q-&-A in Washington on Nov. 2. “Will it be as good as we wanted? No. But we can build on it. And we” in unions “need to help make them (lawmakers) do it. We need a drum beat to take on the tea-baggers,” she said, referring the anti-health care forces roused to riots by the insurance industry, the GOP and the Radical Right.

“HR 3962 meets our priorities for health care reform,” Communications Workers official Annie Hill said in urging her union’s members to hit the phones to Capitol Hill. “It does not tax our benefits. Instead, it asks the wealthiest 0.3% -- individuals earning $500,000 or more and families earning $1,000,000 or more annually -- to pay an additional surtax on their incomes.

FULL story at link.

[clear eye]

1. Sorry, Steve. There's a reality disconnect here.

H.R. 3962 doesn't create comprehensive, universal or affordable health care. What it does do is derail efforts to get those things and make it illegal for states to create such a program.