By John J. Sweeney
Real Americans are in real pain and are charged up to elect real leaders.
Seventeen-thousand real Americans—our union members and their families—were shoulder-to-shoulder Aug. 7 at Soldier Field in Chicago, engaging the Democratic presidential candidates in a tough discussion about what matters most to working people. While Iraq, pensions, job safety and other issues were prominent, one topic came up again and again: America's broken health care system and what we can do to fix it.
You know the stats: 45 million of us have no health coverage, including more than 10 million children. Eight of 10 people without insurance are in working families. Consumer Reports just announced that nearly one-quarter of us—24 percent—are underinsured, "living with skeletal health insurance that barely covers their medical needs and leaves them unprepared to pay for major medical expenses." Family insurance premiums have soared 81 percent since 2000, reaching an astonishing $11,480 per year in 2006—and who can pay that?
I believe the candidates at the AFL-CIO Presidential Candidates Forum heard the pain of working families. I know the union movement has heard it and is ready to act.
Starting on Labor Day, the AFL-CIO will lead a new national push to win quality health care for all by making the 2008 elections a mandate on health care reform and electing a president and Congress who will deliver it.
Working families are tired of excuses. We're tired of talk and lip service. We're fed up with leaders who don't have the political will to address the crisis that affects every one of us...who don't have the integrity to stand up to big-dollar lobbyists from the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries...whose idea of "reform" is sticking struggling families with even more of the bill. And we're darn sure sick of hearing that quality health care for all would cost too much. Look, we've spent more than $500 billion for the Iraq war—and that's likely to more than double. We're spending another couple trillion on President Bush's tax cuts that mostly benefit the already rich. We are the wealthiest and strongest nation on earth. You better believe we can afford to make sure children can be vaccinated, seniors can afford life-saving medications and we all can get the care it will take to make America the healthiest nation on earth, too.
The AFL-CIO Presidential Candidates Forum was just one portion of the outreach, mobilization and activism union working families are ready to launch. Our efforts to elect the next Congress and president will constitute the largest-ever political program of America's labor movement. We're going to win. We'll have national leaders who will restore workers' freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life and who will do what it takes to make guaranteed, quality health care for all a reality.
America will be back in the hands of real Americans.
