Quickies: Daily Reason to Volunteer and Vote for Union Endorsed Candidates
October 24- Because humans are not stranded costs:
I keep coming back to this one. But we all know someone, probably love someone, whose life has been or is jeopardized by the healthcare system. Maybe you have employer sponsored insurance but have been out of work so long your benefits have run out. Maybe your son or daughter is transitioning to adulthood and is no longer covered by your plan. Maybe you worked without healthcare before joining a union. There is no shortage of nightmarish tales of dealing with the healthcare insurance industry. There is no doubt the healthcare system in the US is broken and the American people are demanding that the next administration address the issue.
Yet, McCain plans to get rid of state regulations and introduce interstate competition into healthcare. He has the audacity to tout this plan while we are living in the midst of a credit crisis that has resulted from the removal of regulatory protections. We are losing jobs in San Diego, and many of us owe more on our homes than what they are worth. Is that really the model we want to export to health care?
That is what McCain wants to do. McCain’s health care plan will increase taxes on employer based healthcare like ours and, in doing so, price tens of millions of Americans out of their current coverage. First you get a tax credit that is in no way tied to healthcare costs. Then you will be pushed into a market in which the minimum levels of benefits have been dismantled.
California’s electrical workers are intimately familiar with deregulation and most consumers remember the summer of 2000, when our electricity rates tripled while IBEW members were losing their jobs and pensions and IBEW employers were going bankrupt. Ratepayers paid billion of dollars as stranded costs to utlities. Now underinsured and uninsured Californians will become stranded costs for insurance compainies.
We are living a credit crisis. Deregulation created our energy crisis. Every day presents a possible healthcare crisis to 47 million uninsured Americans. We cannot afford to pay with our hard earned wages or with the lives of loved one, for deregulating healthcare any further.
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