Bush health care rhetoric ‘scares and distracts’

Health care is clearly a top issue for Mainers, as for all Americans. Unfortunately, much of the presidential campaign has been about personalities and attack politics, instead of informed policy debates. Politics of negativity and cynicism serve a purpose; it keeps public attention away from the policies that create the “have-mores” and the have-nots.

At the last presidential debate President Bush attacked Sen. Kerry’s health care plan, but in doing so revealed a real solution to our health care problems.

During the debate Bush said, “He [Kerry] just said he wants everybody to be able to buy into the same plan that senators and congressmen get. That costs the government $7,700 per family. If every family in America signed up like the senator suggested it would cost us $5 trillion over 10 years. It’s an empty promise. It’s called bait and switch.”

Bush attempted to do a con. Not “bait and switch,” but rather “scare and distract” – scare us about government intervention to distract us from a very common sense solution, i.e. the ability of Americans to “buy into that $7,700 plan.

We all know that senators and congressmen get good insurance – low deductibles, drug cards – the best in the business. So, how does a total cost of $7,700 per family per compare to the open market?

If you are a 57-year-old millworker trying to get a good family plan, its $21,619.56 a year at Blue Cross Blue Shield. That’s 281 percent more. (This past February Congressman Mike Michaud supported legislation which would have given small employers the ability to establish plans similar to those enjoyed by members of Congress. This legislation was killed by the Republican-controlled Congress.)

Many of the more than 18,000 manufacturing workers in Maine who have lost their jobs largely due to outsourcing since Bush took office are now going back to school and many are eligible for Trade Adjustment Assistance benefits. For this same worker if he enrolls in a TAA program, the total cost for health insurance is $18,120 a year. Largely as a result of lobbying from the AFL-CIO and Democrats, the government has expanded support for laid off workers to include payments of 65 percent of this cost or $11,778 a year. So, the government pays $4,078 more than the $7,700 under the congressional plan. And worse yet the millworker still has to pay 35 percent or $6,342.

Mike Woodbury is a laid-off millworker from Eastern Fine Paper who can’t afford health insurance. “I pay cash for my medication. Right now I only get it when I can afford it. I’ve cut back on my cholesterol medications. The doctor told me to take it two times a day, but I cut back to once a day. Right now I don’t go to the doctor unless I really, absolutely, positively have to go. I really need to be suffering to go.”

If Mike were able to access the plan Bush so disparages, together with the health benefit under TAA, he would have health insurance today and so would thousands of other families in the Bangor area.

The United States pays the highest per capita cost for health insurance. Why on earth would Bush stand against such a common sense solution, which would give health security to his fellow Americans? One answer may lie in the fact that Bush has received $6.6 million in contributions from drug and insurance companies.

If you follow the money, and there’s a lot of it, you can find the real “bait and switch.”

The big picture is that with Bush as president and a Republican-controlled House and Senate, the United States has become increasingly more anti-worker and anti-middle class. The New York Times reports that “during the Bush years, take-home pay, as a share of the economy, has fallen to its lowest level since 1929, when government started keeping records. Corporate profits have grown faster – and wages and salaries far less – than in all other eight recoveries since World War II.” (New York Times, Oct. 13)

Part of the reason for the rich increasingly growing richer is Bush’s support for the outsourcing of jobs, both publicly as well as through tax loopholes. For large corporations and for the very wealthy who own them, it makes a lot of economic sense to cut labor costs by 60 to 90 percent. And this outsourcing is moving from the manufacturing sector to the service sector. Forrester Research estimates that U.S. employers will ship 588,000 white-collar service jobs abroad this year, up from 315,000 last year.

The last four years with Republicans in control of federal government have been absolutely horrible for the majority of working families. Median income on average has decreased by $1,500 while costs have gone up. George Bush is the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over a net job loss.

The facts are in: creating and implementing policies to make the rich richer doesn’t “trickle down” and benefit all Americans. These right-wing policies amount to, in their cumulative effect, a class war on working class Americans.

In the union movement we figured out long ago that we have to organize and struggle for social progress. In the face of Republican opposition, union members fought for social security, Medicare, Medicaid, fair labor laws, minimum wage laws to benefit all Americans. These were long, hard fought battles, but America is a much freer, secure

and prosperous nation as a result.

This past Thursday morning more than 50 laid-off workers and supporters formed a symbolic unemployment line to demonstrate the problem of lost jobs and the lack of basic necessities like affordable health care. These problems affect all of us. Together, we have to stand up and fight to make sure that our government works for all Americans. Such generosity and solidarity are what provide true liberty and freedom.

Jack McKay is president of the Greater Bangor Area Central Labor Council.