US Unions Rally To Support Healthcare Reforms

By Tony Burke - Morning Star
Monday 10 August 2009

Faced with a massive onslaught by the Republican right on President Obama's health-care proposals, AFL-CIO president John Sweeney has called upon trade unionists in the US to mobilise at pro-healthcare "town hall" meetings.

The meetings organised by the pro-healthcare lobby are being violently disrupted by right-wingers and Republicans who are trying to wreck Obama's health-care proposals.

Sweeney laid out the stark choice facing the US Congress: "Side with health insurers and vote for legislation that continues their control over health care in America, or vote for reform that puts people in charge of their health care. The question for us is, will we let them make health care 'Obama's Waterloo' or will we make it the next big step in our march to turn around America?"

The US right wing has organised high-profile, disruptive and violent demonstrations at the town hall meetings led by an organisation called Tea-Party Patriots, which has been dubbed by unions as the "Tea Bag Patriots."

Republicans and right-wing groups funded by the health-care industry claim to be genuine opponents of Obama's reforms.

However, right-wing activists are being caught red-handed.

One woman who protested at a public meeting held by Wisconsin Democrat congressman Steve Kagen said she was "just a mom" but turned out to be a former senior Republican Party official. A number of pro-healthcare meetings have been cancelled out of fear of violence.

In Missouri, six people were arrested at one event.

A group of supporters hung an effigy of a Democratic congressman outside his office, while another Democrat has received death threats.

The Washington Post has commented: "They've become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems."

"Hundreds of millions of dollars - including lots of our insurance premium dollars - are being spent by an unholy alliance of insurers, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News and the Republican right in an aggressive campaign to stop health reform," said Sweeney.

Former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin has called the pro-healthcare plan "evil" and placed a typically cranky comment on her Facebook site saying: "The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down's syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide whether they are worthy of health care."

Misinformation relating to Britain's NHS and the Canadian health service pours out on web sites such as those run by Patients First.

The union fightback involves major participation in both live Congressional town hall meetings and virtual "tele-town hall meetings."

It includes election-style union communications with union members at home and work, leadership meetings with Congressional members arguing for a requirement that all employers "pay or play," a robust public health-insurance plan to compete with private insurers and drive down health costs, relief for company/union funds providing pre-Medicare retiree coverage and no taxation of health benefits.

Special attention is to be paid to retirees who have been a major target of the rightwingers and the Alliance for Retired Americans is organising to attend member-sponsored town hall meetings and create events of their own.

Sweeney said: "At stake is nothing less than insurers' power to control what doctors we see, what treatments we get and how much of our wage dollars go to their fat profits. President Obama's proposal would put people and their doctors in charge of their own health care, reduce health-care cost inflation, outlaw insurance company abuses, give doctors better decision-making tools for care and require insurers to compete with a public health-insurance option."