The Solution:
Workers shouldn't have to sacrifice to save a basic American value--If you work, you've earned the right to health care security.
What our nation needs are the industry-wide, multi-employer health care plans that are provided through union contracts. These plans reduce costs to the individual employer, allow employees to change jobs within the industry without losing coverage and give workers a voice in their benefit plan through joint labor-management administration. The biggest challenge these plans face in the retail industry is the increased cost that results from cost shifting by companies such as Wal-Mart.
The UFCW advocates a “Play or Pay System” — one that requires employers to provide a standard health insurance package to workers or pay into a government sponsored system.
Poll data shows that most employees expect health insurance as a benefit in the workplace. About 95% of UFCW members (who represent a cross-section of the American workforce), believe that employees should get insurance when they go to work. The Play or Pay System is a politically acceptable solution.
The UFCW will continue to support state and local universal coverage initiatives but that solution only pits state against state. We need a national solution.
A report commissioned by the National Coalition on Health Care estimates that as many as 53.7 million Americans will be without health insurance by 2006 unless there is major, comprehensive reform of the nation’s health care system.
If we stick with the system we have now. Workers will:
- Be forced to drop coverage because they can’t afford it;
- Rely on emergency medicine to treat problems or wait until a catastrophic illness emerges with huge treatment costs;
- Overload the system and drive up costs both to the worker and the provider;
- Families will face even greater bankruptcy rates as they struggle to pay for health care;
- Resulting in more bankruptcies, less consumer spending, fewer savings and a greater economic downturn than we are experiencing today.
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