In a sign that the movement for universal access to quality, affordable health care is growing, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has changed its position on shareholder-submitted universal health insurance proposals for U.S. companies.

The new rule means that firms can no longer exclude such proposals from the vote at shareholder meetings. For years, unions, religious groups and other organizations -- which hold billions in companies' stock as part of their pensions and health benefit accounts -- have submitted shareholder proposals encouraging support for the principle of quality, affordable health coverage for all.

But now, companies must either bring these proposals to a vote or engage the shareholders in a dialogue on the issue.

The SEC explained its decision:

But the commission said it was appropriate for shareholders to express their views to company management by voting on "significant social policy issues" beyond day-to-day business matters.

Over the years, the commission said, it had reversed its position on certain issues to reflect "changing societal views," and that now appears to be the case with respect to health care.

The rule change came after a strong effort led by the AFL-CIO to get the SEC to require companies to respect their shareholders' desire for health care reform.

The purpose of the shareholder proposals is to bring businesses into the universal health care debate. With health costs skyrocketing, American companies are realizing that reforming our country's health care system will benefit not just patients but businesses' bottom lines as well.

Companies like General Electric and Medco Health Solutions have adopted universal health care principles. But others including General Motors and Reynolds America remain opposed, arguing that universal coverage principles are against their interests.

Until these businesses come around, it's important for unions like CWA to continue to use our leverage to convince them to become part of the solution.

– 05/29/08

By Addie Brinkley

RMC Board Member and Healthcare Coordinator

In 1988, 66 percent of all U.S. employers provided retirees health care benefits - many of them negotiated by CWA and other labor unions.

Today, half of those employers have dropped retiree health care and others are threatening to do so. Our union and others are fighting as hard as we can to save retiree benefits, but it's tough.

That's why we as retirees have to be a big, vocal, visible part of the battle that CWA is waging to guarantee that every American has access to affordable health care. Our union's leaders have committed to this fight in the same way they've committed to passing the Employee Free Choice Act, seeing both as vital to the strength of our country and the health and economic well being of all working families.

I'm asking you to join me and the rest of the leadership of the Retired Members' Council in this campaign not just for ourselves but to ensure that our children and grandchildren won't have to risk being bankrupted by medical debts or fear that a pre-existing condition will keep them from getting insurance.

In February, CWA held an energetic series of workshops for health care activists, which I attended with my fellow board member Ray Myers. We talked about getting our message out and the concerns some Americans, even CWA members, have about changing our health care system.

The fact is, many concerns are based on myths that simply aren't true. We are rightly proud of our country for many achievements, but it's no longer true, if it ever was, that we have the world's best health care system. In other developed countries such as Canada and most of Europe, virtually 100 percent of people have guaranteed health care. In America, our costs are staggeringly higher yet we have 47 million people with no health insurance, we die younger and have a higher infant mortality rate.

CWA's campaign isn't focusing on a specific solution - all the details of the debate that candidates and economists are arguing over. But we're insisting that Congress by the year 2010 choose a solution that guarantees affordable health care for all and that by 2012 the plan will be in place.

On this website, you can read much more about the campaign our union is leading and what you can do to help - things as easy but important as sending a postcard to your member of Congress and arming yourself with the facts so you're ready next time a friend or neighbor spouts one of those health care myths.

Profoundly important is that we work to elect U.S. House and Senate members and a president this fall who will stand with us on health care reform and the Employee Free Choice Act.

It's going to be an exciting year. Let's get to work.

You can learn more about CWA's Retired Members' Council and become a membera at www.cwaretirees.com .

– 04/08/08

Health care systems that are public, of high quality and that give equal service to all citizens, unemployed or not, are best for society. That's what it's all about in Europe," said Bo Larsen of Denmark, head of Telecoms-Europe for Union Network International.

Of all the world's developed countries, the United States is the only one that fails to provide health care coverage for all its residents. While financing mechanisms vary, all 27 member states of the European Union, Japan and many other countries manage to provide universal coverage. None are perfect and - like the United States - all struggle with rising health care inflation. But overall there is pride and satisfaction in the service provided.

The national health system in France came in first in a recent quality ranking by the World Health Organization. (The United States came in 37th.) Surveys show that 78 percent of French citizens are happy with their health care system. France spends just 10.7 percent of its gross national product on health care; the U.S. spends 16 percent. The French system works much like Medicare in this country but covers the entire nation. 

Everyone in France has access to doctors of his or her own choosing through national insurance funds. Every employer and employee pays into these funds, and the state picks up the tab for the unemployed. Patients with chronic diseases and those requiring critical surgeries get no bills, the services are fully paid by the national plan. France's infant mortality rate is 3.9 per 1,000 live births, compared with 7 in the U.S. and life expectancy is 79.4 years - two years more than in the United States.

Great Britain's National Health Service (NHS), financed through taxes, provides free health care to all citizens. Though unions are free to bargain for supplemental health insurance, they have no need to bargain for basic health benefits.

Billy Hayes, general secretary of the Communication Workers Union, said the system "strengthens unions, because good health, without which all other gains are meaningless, is separated from the grasp of the employer to use as a stick to beat the union. That is why all trade unions in the UK rally to support the NHS when there is even the slightest suggestion of tinkering with it."

Great Britain in 2004 spent 8.1 percent of gross domestic product on health care, about half the U.S. expense, according to the World Health Organization.

"The NHS mission is to provide care from the cradle to the grave," explained Steph Marston, organizing director for Connect UK, a union for managers and professionals in telecommunications. "When I was born, my mother was attended by a NHS midwife. The NHS ensured that my brother and I were immunized against infectious diseases and treated promptly and expertly for childhood ailments. When my mother noticed I was peering at things, she could take me to the optician for free, and I got free glasses to correct my sight."

Marston also said that when she broke her finger, she went to the hospital, was scheduled for surgery the next day and had six months of physical therapy to regain strength in her hand - all free. When her father became chronically ill, he received treatment and medication for six years, including home visits by a physician.

"My family wasn't poor, but we didn't have money to spare, and they didn't work for union companies," Marston said. "It's more than likely that in America my family would not have had the means to access good health services."  

In Germany, "Compulsory health insurance and its joint financing have been dependable here for more than a century," said Lothar Schröder, head of the Telecommunications and IT Sector of Ver.di, Germany's largest union. "The public health system guarantees a high level of medical care in Germany - regardless of people's social status and income."

Workers in Germany are required to join one of almost 300 statutory sickness funds, which must accept all applicants.  The sickness funds are required to be self-sufficient and premiums are set as a percentage of income - currently about 14 percent - with employers and employees each paying half.  Unemployed residents who have previously worked are still covered through one of the sickness funds, as are retirees, who pay lower premiums. Local governments provide additional funds to cover the unemployed who have never worked.

"Unions play a major role in the design of the German health system," Schröder pointed out. "The health insurance funds are administered by the employers and the trade unions on equal terms."

He pointed out that Germany's health system pays all costs for inpatient and outpatient treatment, hospital stays and dentistry and, "If an employee is sick for more than six weeks, the health insurance additionally pays part of the wages."

Great Britain's Hayes said unions around the globe are waiting to see what priority voters in the U.S. will give to health care in the coming election. "It would be an inspiration to workers all over the world if labor's interest were delivered through free universal health care for the American people."

– 04/08/08

Understaffing combined with patients’ fears that they won’t be treated — or won’t be able to pay — create health care crises daily in hospitals across the nation. So say nurses represented by CWA in New York, New Jersey and Iowa.

They blame a profit-driven health care system that, in the words of Kathy Boyd of Nurses United/CWA Local 1168, “just doesn’t work for a lot of people.”

Boyd is an RN in Pre-Op Services at Kaleida's Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital in Buffalo, N.Y. She performs blood tests, EKGs and physicals to prepare patients for surgery. Her colleague Sandy Miller is an RN at Fillmore's Critical Care Unit.  Both have seen what happens when uninsured patients come in for medical emergencies.

Miller spoke of a man in his late forties who owned a restaurant and had suffered a heart attack.  "He was trying to accelerate getting his tests done. He was preoccupied with not having insurance and was afraid he'd lose everything because of the cost of staying in the hospital. He was extremely stressed. He couldn't rest." Against medical advice, he left within 24 hours.

 "We would never discharge a patient after a heart attack that quickly," Miller said.

She said the man should have gone through "cardiac rehab," received a thorough explanation of what had happened to him, coaching on danger signs and what to do if it happened again. He should have had an angiogram.

"When things like this happen, we feel like we haven't done our jobs right," Miller said. "He might not be so lucky next time."

The United States spends nearly $100 billion a year to provide health services to uninsured residents, according to the National Coalition on Health Care, and hospitals provide about $34 billion worth of uncompensated care annually.

Hospitals are only required to treat patients who cannot pay when they have life-threatening situations. People without means often defer preventive care and visit emergency rooms only when they must. When admitted, they usually stay in the hospital longer.  Hospitals tend to offset these costs by keeping staff to a minimum and raising charges for privately insured patients.

Boyd said staffing at Kaleida is always an issue. "We have a skeleton crew and high vacancy rate as far as full-time positions being filled. The hospital likes to hire part-time, probably because it is cheaper, benefit wise."

Janice Allen, co-chair of the New Jersey Nurses Union/CWA Local 1091, is an RN in the Family Care Center, the obstetrical unit of St. Barnabas Hospital in Livingston, N.J. Caring for young mothers and their newborn babies, she also worries about short staffing.

The ratio of nurses to patients on her unit is typically 1:8. She'll file a complaint with management if it exceeds that. "I would like to see it 1:6," she said. "I do a lot of teaching. We want to make moms comfortable and educate them about newborn care, but you prioritize and you do the best you can." In California, the only state that has established a nurse-to-patient ratio by law, it's 1:5.

Ironically, nurses themselves often lack good affordable health care.  Boyd says that because of their CWA contract, nurses at Kaleida can choose from several different health plans and, overall, have good benefits. But she worries about her two adult children, a son age 25, who is an engineer and her daughter, 22, an LPN at a non-union nursing home. "They have pretty basic insurance, which has high co-pays. They have to pay a lot for their medications, so they don't go to the doctor; they don't go to the dentist," said Boyd.

Even some nurses working under CWA contracts pay high premiums for health insurance. Lauri Lilli, an RN at Great River Medical Center in Burlington, Iowa, said she pays about $3,500 a year in premiums for her family plan. Her local has tried, without success, to win prescription drug benefits in three rounds of bargaining. And they still have no health insurance for retirees.

"You'd think, as a nurse, you'd have good health insurance," Lilli said. "It's because the hospital is having to eat all those costs of people who can't pay. It affects everybody."

– 04/08/08