In Southern California, workers were given no choice but to fight. The local unions faced a demand that would have effectively eliminated affordable health care benefits for its members. Through their struggle the striking and locked out workers have performed a service for the entire country… they sounded the alarm that your health care benefits are at risk. The strike caused by these big profitable mega corporations also sounded an alarm…that the American health care system is ready to collapse. In the negotiations, two players who influenced the strike were not at the table… Wal-Mart and the Health care system.
Five years of double-digit increases in the cost of health insurance has caused many employers to either eliminate or drastically reduce coverage. In just one year, over 2 million people lost health insurance. That’s over 6,000 workers a day. Wal-Mart the world’s largest corporation covers only about 40% of its employees who pay almost $300 a month for coverage. What happens when the 60% who can’t afford the coverage are ill or injured? We all pay for it. We pay for what Wal-Mart should in two ways. First in higher taxes, because States through Medicaid are paying for the uninsured coverage causing large budget deficits and secondly in higher costs from health care providers to make up for unpaid charges.
Americans have the highest cost health care and the worst coverage of any of the industrialized countries. We must have national health care reform. No one company, no one union, no industry, or group of workers alone can fix the health care system. We can patch it up. We can protect our members for another contract term, but the system continues to fail. The increased cost on both employers and workers is leaving more and more families with out health care.
It is clear that what we are doing now is not working. In the United States, health care spending now averages $5,440 per person, roughly double the amount spent in European countries. The U.S. Census Bureau recently announced an increase in the number of Americans without health insurance of 2.4 million, bringing the total to 43.6 million, or 15.2 percent of the population
Now is the time for action. 2004 is the year to put health care reform on the political agenda. We need to demand that every candidate for office commits to comprehensive, affordable health insurance for every working family. UFCW has endorsed John Kerry for President because we believe that he will lead the nation to reform the system. President Bush’s plan to allow us to save our own money in a tax-free health savings account may be fine for millionaires but it takes everything that workers earn to get by.
No worker should ever again be forced to choose between a paycheck and health care. No worker should ever be forced into the streets to protect health care for their families. Affordable health insurance for all Americans can be a reality…we must not allow the sacrifice of those 70,000 Southern California workers to be for naught.