E-Mail Alert
Sign up to get e-mail alerts on working family issues and happenings.
|
| Q: | What is the goal of the AFL-CIO’s health care campaign? | | A: | Our goal is to win secure, high-quality health care for all. We’ll do that by mobilizing and educating our members, building key alliances with businesses and progressive groups. | | | | | Q: | What is the AFL-CIO’s plan for health care reform? | | A: | We are fighting for a unique American plan for health care reform that: - Controls rising and irrational costs.
- Provides comprehensive, high-quality health care to all.
- Gives every family the opportunity and the responsibility for preventive care.
- Preserves the right to choose and use your own doctor.
- Asks our government to play a strong role in restoring balance to the system—curbing greed and incompetence and ensuring more fairness and efficiency.
- Lowers employer costs and, in return, asks them to pay their fair share, along with government and individuals.
- Builds on what’s best about American health care while drawing from what works in other countries.
|
| | | | Q: | Isn’t that “socialized medicine” like they have in Canada? | | A: | No. We believe that government, employers and individuals all have a role to play in a system that provides real health security, choice and high-quality health care for all. With American ingenuity and input from all Americans, we believe it possible, even necessary, to craft a uniquely American plan for health care reform. | | | | | Q: | Do you support the Conyers bill (H.R. 676)? | | A: | The Conyers bill is one bill that is in line with our vision for secure, high-quality health care for all Americans. Rather than wedding ourselves to one bill at this time, we are building grassroots support for health care reform and plan to work with a working family-friendly president and Congress to enact meaningful reform. | | | | | Q: | What are the elements of the health care campaign? | | A: | This is a campaign of education, outreach and mobilization. We will help to arm working people with the knowledge they need to make informed choices about health care reform. We also will help our members make their voices heard in the health care debate. In addition to talking to our members, this campaign will be talking to allies, including not only other progressive organizations but also, crucially, employers. Our employers that have been providing good health benefits have a real stake in reforming health care and must be part of the debate and the solution. | | | | | Q: | Why are unions involved in this issue? Don’t union members have health care through their union contracts? | | A: | Unions have built a national standard of comprehensive health care benefits funded by employers. As the cost of health care spins out of control, businesses that offer health care are hobbled in a global marketplace and also are at a competitive disadvantage here at home. Today’s broken system drags down the American economy. And that hurts everyone. In addition, health care costs are increasingly the crux of many union negotiations, and union members say they simply can’t continue to take on increased costs. | | | | | Q: | Why are you stepping into the health care debate now? | | A: | Unions have been fighting for health care for decades. In fact, we supported and fought for universal health care coverage after World War II as part of the Fair Deal agenda and lost out to Big Business. When the nation then adopted an employer-based health care system, it was union members who fought in contract after contract to improve health care benefits and thus raised the standards for the nation. | | | |
|
New AFL-CIO Ad: Don't Tax Our Health Care
|
