Employment-Based Health Care Is an Anchor around the Neck of the U.S. Working Class

For a generation, U.S. unions have traded wages and other benefits for ever-shrinking health care coverage from employers, or for the ever-increasing employer contributions required to maintain similarly shrinking benefits from union-sponsored health and welfare funds. Photo: National Nurses United

February 14, 2020 / Mark Dudzic

Last June at the House Ways and Means Committee Hearing on Medicare for All, Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas lamented, “That great health care plan that your union negotiated for you? It’s gone. Banned under Medicare for All.”

A right-wing congressman with a 7 percent lifetime voting score from the AFL-CIO crying crocodile tears for union health care plans can easily be dismissed as just another absurdity of America’s political dysfunction.

But when Sen. Joe “The Working Man’s Friend” Biden repeats the charge almost word for word, and when AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka insists—on Fox News, no less!—that “if there isn’t some way to have our plans integrated into the system, then we would not support [Medicare for All],” something is up.

Talking points, after all, don’t appear out of thin air. They’re carefully crafted and disseminated by lobbyists and publicists, often on behalf of corporate interests.

FULL story: https://labornotes.org/2020/02/viewpoint-employment-based-health-care-anchor-around-neck-us-working-class