Imagine: Health insurance for all
With apologies to John Lennon, they may say we are dreamers, but we’re not the only ones.
And sometimes it’s hard to imagine all the people with us on this single-payer issue.
When the UAW and others suggest that publicly financed single-payer insurance is the best way to address our country’s health care crisis, those against it belittle our political vision as outside the mainstream.
In fact, 65 percent of Americans favor national health insurance for all – even if taxes increase – according to a May 2005 poll by the Pew Research Center. Support for a single-payer health insurance system is broad and deep, not only with 90 percent of all liberals supporting it, but 59 percent of all social conservatives as well.
In recent years, the UAW has fought to preserve existing member health care benefits in our contracts. With health care the No. 1 issue in almost every bargaining battle, it is clear the issue cannot be resolved one company at a time.
“We recognize there is a health care problem, but it’s a national problem. We can’t resolve it at General Motors. It’s a national issue, and it’s going to require a national solution,” said UAW President Ron Gettelfinger.
A decade ago when the Clinton health care plan was being debated in Congress, support for it from Big Three workers and other union members with top-flight contractual benefits was less than enthusiastic.
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman thinks autoworkers have no other choice this time around other than to support national health care.
“The current system is unsustainable,” he told Solidarity. “The Big Three’s competitive disadvantage with companies from countries with national health care is just too great.”
The U.S. health care system was already failing in 1969 when then-UAW President Walter Reuther noted that we spent more money than any other nation, yet we were 14th in infant mortality and 26th in life expectancy. In 1998 the United States had slipped to 37th and 29th, respectively.
Speaking before the UAW’s 1969 Collective Bargaining Convention, Reuther declared that comprehensive, high-quality health care should be not a privilege based on ability to pay.
“It ought to be a right, and it ought to be available to every American in every section of this country,” he said.
