UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE
Another Social Entitlement Program OR A Necessity Whose Time Has Come?
The issue of Universal Health care for all Americans has been batted around for years. First proposed by early labor radicals and Communists, it has always been dismissed by America as a Socialist or Communist program. As a child I remember my grandparents getting what they called old age relief. They had to travel about 35 miles to a county health facility to see a doctor. The stigma of getting welfare, or a handout from the government, was something very uncomfortable for a generation that lived through the Great Depression.
We finally embraced health care for the elderly. Medicare changed the way our seniors got health care. If they didn’t get it from working a bunch of years, they still had coverage and they no longer had to go to the county facility. The feeling, like they were getting charity, was finally gone; everyone who was over 65 got it.
The time has come for us to get past the stigma of National Health Care or Socialized Medicine. In the early 1990’s President Clinton and his wife, Hillary, attempted to get this concept off the ground. The Insurance Industry spent 57 million dollars to convince America this Socialist, Commie idea was un-American.
As we end another decade, more than 47 million Americans have no health care insurance. The number of working Americans without health care or with a reduced benefit is rising each month. The new world economy has changed the way companies compete with each other, as well as how employees must compete against the workers in other countries.
Universal Health Care for all of America’s people is no longer a social issue. The new economy dictates that we move the fight to the economic arena. As we have moved to a world economy, more and more U.S. companies have to compete with more companies in other countries around the world. Sub-standard wages in some areas make it difficult for our companies to compete. However, the health care issue makes it almost impossible for them to compete.
Every other country in the industrialized world has Universal Health Care for their citizens. If health care in America cost companies an average of $3600 per year per worker, the products made by the American company have at least a $3600 per worker disadvantage when competing with companies outside the US.
It’s time for us to bring American companies, the Chamber of Commerce, the Merchants and Manufacturing Association and every other group that represents the interests of companies in America together. Our efforts with members of Congress needs to be expanded to enlist all the groups. In the Global Economy we really are all in the same boat. Our interest in a social program runs parallel to the employer interest in being competitive.
John Lewis, ICWUC Vice President/Regional Director
