June, 2009

Economic Justice, Health Care, UFCW Values

>Massive Health Care Day of Action Today

Jun 25, 2009

>UFCW members from all across the country will be descending on Congress today to call for quality, affordable health care as part of “Health Care 09 – We Can’t Wait,” a massive day of action hosted by Health Care for America Now.

Here’s the rundown of the day according to HCAN:

The main event on Thursday will be a large rally held in the Upper Senate Park at 11:30am.

Actress Edie Falco, Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), HCAN Campaign Manager Richard Kirsch, CWA President Larry Cohen, AFSCME President Jerry McEntee, SEIU Secretary Treasurer Anna Burger, Governor Howard Dean, Congressman Becerra (D-CA), National Physicians Alliance President-Elect Valerie Arkoosh and other leading Members of Congress and Senators are expected to speak.

Then we’ll be heading on to town hall meetings on Capitol Hill and flooding the offices of our representatives.

It looks like it’s shaping up to be a historic day for health reform. You can keep up on the action from home by following our Twitter feed or keep tabs on what other advocates are tweetin’ throughout the day with the #healthcare09 widget on http://www.ufcwhealthcarenow.org/.

And don’t forget to take a minute and write in to your paper on why we need a strong public health insurance option. Even though the majority of Americans want a public health insurance option (and poll after poll says we do), those insurance companies still have a lot of money and power. So write in to those papers and let ‘em know what we want!

Uncategorized

>Unions Members Confront Gov. Ritter Over Broken Promises

Jun 24, 2009

>

Colorado Governor Bill Ritter’s in town today, fundraising for his re-election campaign. So some union members from his own state, along with supporters here and from Colorado, have decided to ask Ritter about his refusal to support Colorado’s working families.

So why do union members feel betrayed by Ritter? Despite promises to the contrary, Ritter has vetoed bills that would allow Colorado’s fire fighters to form unions and provide unemployment compensation to workers locked out by employers during contract disputes.

UFCW members from Local 7 in Colorado and the Colorado Professional Fire Fighters (IAFF), along with supporters, are holding informational pickets today to remind the governor of the hard-working Coloradans he has forgotten as he raises money from his big-spending lobbyist donors.

Hopefully, their efforts will jog his memory a little. You know, help him remember who he’s supposed to be working for.

Barack Obama, Economic Justice, Health Care, UFCW Values

>Health Care Insurance Companies Scared of Losing Massive Profits to Public Option

Jun 23, 2009

>According to the Associated Press, Health Insurance companies sent a letter today to the Senate saying that a pubic option for health insurance would cripple their profit-driven business model and hamstring employer-provided health insurance.

This is just another example of the scare tactics that opponents of health care reform are selling, and the American people still aren’t buying.

And the health insurance lobby has a reason to be scared. New York Times/CBS Poll that came out this week found that most Americans

said the government could do a better job of holding down health-care costs than the private sector.



These are companies that have imposed average premium increases of more than 120% over the past decade, according to Health Care for American Now!

The basic disagreement comes down to this:

Americans think that the government could do a better job than private health insurance companies and therefore want a public option.

Private Health Insurers know that the government could do a better job than private health insurance companies and therefore do not want a public option.

The private health insurers have a really big interest in keeping the system the way it is, in spite of it being broken. Why? Because

Profits at 10 of the country’s largest publicly traded health insurance companies rose 428 percent from 2000 to 2007. In 2007 alone, the chief executive officers at these companies collected combined total compensation of $118.6 million-an average of $11.9 million each.

Whose interests should our elected officials keep in mind?