Helping to fight the proposed tax on our benefits, CWA and its lobbying partner, the United Auto Workers, have financed a series of video and print ads.
The ads were produced by Health Care for America Now, a coalition of which CWA is a member. Other members of the coalition include labor, medical, professional and progressive organizations.
While not dropping its other priorities, CWA is focusing on the tax. A study by the research department shows that the proposed levy would become a large tax on the middle class. It would hit about 40 percent of health plans within six years, according to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. The average impact on typical family plans of CWA members would be more than $19,000 in taxes over ten years, according to the report, or $1,900 a year.
While the tax would be directed at employers, the employers, in turn, would seek to cut benefits to avoid the extra costs, the report says. Employers can't cut our benefits unilaterally - they're protected by contract - but we can expect future bargaining to get even tougher.
Health reform bills are taking shape, so this is a really important time to speak up. The bill passed by the Senate Finance Committee would tax our benefits, so this is a really important reason to speak up.
Tomorrow - Wednesday, Oct. 28 - is CWA's national call in day. Call 1-888-580-0792, and you'll be connected to the office of one of your Senators.
The impact of the benefits tax on typical CWA members would be $1,900 a year for those with family insurance, based on the Finance Committee bill. We're hearing that the Senate leadership is planning to make it less onerous - a sign that our pressure is having an effect. But a revised tax on our benefits is still a tax on our benefits.
We've got to keep up the pressure and knock out the tax altogether.
Although this tax is being sold as applying to "Cadillac" benefits, data from the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation shows that it would hit a third of all health plans; in other words, it will cut deep into the middle class.
CWA strongly supports health reform, but taxing the benefits of working families is the wrong way to pay for it. All employers and wealthy individuals need to pay their fair share. CWA supports the House of Representatives health reform bill, with a strong requirement that all employers pay their fair share and with a "millionaires' tax" instead of a benefits tax. It also offers a strong public option to compete with private insurance companies and protects pre-Medicare retirees.
Note: The following report was sent in by Robert Longer, vice president of Local 9421 in Sacrramento. We invite others to send reports, pictures and links to news reports for Health Care Voices to Bill Salganik at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). You can also read about more CWA actions in this report.
CWA Local 9421 partnered with the Sacramento Central Labor Council (a coalition of 160,000 Union members in the greater Sacramento area), Health Care for America Now (HCAN), and Organizing For America (OFA) in a big event for health care reform: an overnight vigil, fast and phone bank in front of the Federal building in downtown Sacramento. The purpose of the event was to urge the Senate to pass a real--not watered-down--health care reform bill. Our message: any final health care reform bill must have a public option, must require every employer to participate and must not tax our benefits!
A rally and kickoff event were held at 5 p.m. Oct. 19 with guest speakers; about 70 people showed up. Elected officials CA Assembly Majority Leader Alberto Torrico, CA Assemblymember Alyson Huber both spoke, along with Sacramento City Councilmember Kevin McCarty. Also speaking were Sandy Adams with OFA, and Bill Camp, executive secretary of the Sacramento Central Labor Council. The media was there to cover this too.
OFA had a huge 'health care stories' quilt on display and CWA Local 9421 had a giant insurance company puppet; both caught the attention of the media and commute traffic, as passersby honked in support.
At 9pm, faith/religious leaders and about 40 people formed a circle; each and every person in the circle held a candle and shared their personal health care story, many of which were very moving. The media was again present to cover this.
After the vigil, a dozen committed to fasting stayed and camped out in front of the Federal building, sleeping on the sidewalk in chairs and sleeping bags throughout the cold and windy night. The media covered this too, along with conducting several interviews; both Robert Longer, CWA Local 9421 vice president and Jeanie McKoy, CWA Local 9421 Steward were interviewed; both also stayed the night and fasted too.
On the morning of Tuesday, October the 20th, the fasters/campers woke up to TV cameras at 4:30am; there were live broadcasts by several TV news stations. Then, at 6:00am, the 24-hour fast was broken and the dozen fasters were joined by a group of a dozen or so others, including CA Assemblymember Mariko Yamada and Dr. Ami Bera, candidate for Congress in the 3rd congressional district; both spoke. Then Bill Camp, Executive Secretary of the Sacramento Central Labor Council passed bread around the circle; everyone broke bread to end the fast, as Reverend Dexter McNamara of the Interfaith Services Bureau eloquently spoke.
After the fast was broken, the two-dozen or so took out their cell phones and called Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) to thank her for supporting the public option, but also urged her to ensure that every employer participates (pays or plays) and ensure that benefits must not be taxed.
All in all, this event was a huge success, and showed that a group of concerned CWAers and our coalition partners can make a difference.
As Congress reaches the final stages of shaping and debating health reform legislation, CWA members across the country have written thousands of letters, made thousands of phone calls and participated in a variety of actions across the country.
You can read a first person report from one of the participants in a health care vigil, Robert Longer, vice president of Local 9421 in Sacramento. We invite others to send accounts, pictures and links to news reports for Health Care Voices to Bill Salganik at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Among the recent demonstrations with CWA participation:
About a dozen members of Locals 6300, 6355 and 36047 joined a in rush hour action supporting health reforms at eight major intersections in St. Louis. Two other members of Local 6355 also joined a similar action at an intersection in Kansas City. Both were part of the Jobs with Justice national day of action on Oct. 20. Members of Local 6355 have also been handbilling at job sites to generate calls to Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), a supporter of health reform who is a potential swing vote on some details of the bill. Bradley Harmon, coordinator for Local 6355, and Shannon Duffy, from Local 36047 (The St. Louis Newspaper Guild) were among the people interviewed for the televised news report.
Members of Local 3108 in Orlando were among about two dozen union members and retirees who made a surprise visit to the office of Rep. Suzanne Kosmas (D-Fla.), who is uncommitted on health reform. "She's not for reform," one of the participants, Jennifer Kenne with the Alliance for Retired Americans, told tv station WDBO. "She won't make any commitments, and we want a public option." The action was coordinated by Health Care for America Now, a reform coalition of which CWA is a member. Kosmas was not at the office, but members will be meeting with her in early November to try to win a commitment to reform, according Joy Edery, coordinator for Local 3122 in Miami.
CWA members were among hundreds from the AFL-CIO who demonstrated outside a Washington meeting of the health insurance lobby, America's Health Insurance Plans. Linda Foley, former president of TNG/CWA, was among thje participants quoted in a report by NPR. HCAN held a press conference with speakers who had been victimized by insurers, such as Courtney Atnip from Tennessee, who said her insurance company had denied her the medication she needed for an intestinal disorder, causing her condition to worsen and leading to surgery and other treatments costing $750,000.
The Senate Finance Committee's health reform bill includes a tax on so-called "Cadillac" health plans, those that cost substantially more than average. An updated report by CWA's research department shows that the Finance Committee's benefits tax would hit 31 million taxpayers -- one-third of all health plans -- by 2019. That means it cuts deep into the middle class. Although the tax would be collected from employers or insurance companies, they are expected to pass the impact on to workers, in higher premiums, higher out-of-pocket charges or reduced benefits.
"The Senate Finance Committee excise tax is not a tax on 'Cadillac' plans; it's a pick-up truck tax. It taxes plans that are of great utility to millions of working Americans," said CWA President Larry Cohen. "Health care reform should be paid for by making employers who don't pay, pay."
Middle-income taxpayers (those making $50,000 to $75,000 a year) in plans that get hit by the tax would, in effect, have a 1.4 percent tax increase. For those making a million dollars a year in plans hit by the tax, the increase would be just 0.1 percent.
The new report is consistent with previous research showing that "Cadillac" plans are largely a myth - except for those available to corporate executives. Plans with higher premiums generally don't have outlandish benefits. Premiums are high because the workers are older, because the employer is small, because the employee group performs dangerous work that leads to more need for care (such as firefighters or coal miners), or because the workers happen to live in high-cost cities and rural areas.
The latest CWA report finds:
One-quarter of taxpayers making between $50,000 and $75,000 would be hit by the tax.
By 2019, the average tax increase for each affected taxpayer would be $1,318 a year. Between 2013, when the tax would take effect, and 2019, the total impact would be $7,640.
The tax impact on a typical CWA member, with the most popular health plan, will be more than $19,000 over ten years.
CWA believes there are better ways to pay for health reform than a massive new tax on working families. Three of them are contained in H.R. 3200, the House health reform bill endorsed by CWA: making employers pay a penalty if they don't pay their fair share of health costs; modestly increasing income taxes for the richest 1.2 percent of Americans; and a strong public health insurance option to cut costs. Also, President Obama has proposed limits on tax deductions for families making more than $350,000 a year.
The Senate Finance Committee health reform bill includes a tax on higher-cost health insurance. Supporters like to say the tax will hit "Cadillac plans," a deceptive name which sounds like it impacts only lavish, luxurious and pricy coverage.
But the idea of "Cadillac" coverage is a myth. As previous research has shown, health plans with relatively high premiums generally don't have de luxe benefits. Rather, the premiums are high because the work force is older, because the employer is small or because the company is located in a high-cost city or rural area.
Now, a new report from CWA's research department, drawing on data from the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), shows that the so-called "Cadillac" tax will pretty soon be hitting a lot of Chevys. The JCT estimates that the tax would hit 19 percent of individual plans and 14 percent of family plans when it is imposed in 2013 - already more than a narrow slice of the pampered rich.
But, as the cost of premiums continues to escalate at a rate much faster than inflation, the tax would hit millions more working families. By 2019, just six years after it goes into effect, the tax would hit 41% of individual plans and 37% of families. (The JCT analysis was based on the bill before committee amendments; numbers are expected to change somewhat, but not a huge amount, for the amended bill.)
Nearly half of us would be driving Cadillacs - at least, if you trust the Senate Finance Committee to know a Cadillac when it sees one. The CWA report also found:
Employers will respond to the tax by cutting benefits.
The tax impact on CWA members would average $19,300 over the next ten years for a family plan.
The tax on benefits would sting the middle class, but scarcely be felt by millionaires. It would be equivalent to 2.0% of income for households making $50,000 to $75,000 a year, but only 0.1% for families making over $1 million.
Instead of taxing our benefits, the report says, Congress can raise the money needed for health reform by penalizing employers who don't pay their fair share (a provision included in the House health reform bill, which CWA favors), by small increases in income taxes on the richest Americans (also in the House bill), by limiting charitable deductions for families earning more than half a million dollars a year (proposed by President Barack Obama), or by creating a public health insurance option (in the House bill).
CWA joined the AFL-CIO and about two dozen other international unions in newspaper ads promising to oppose the health reform bill just approved by the Senate Finance Committee unless it is changed so that it "makes substantial progress to address the concerns of working men and women."
The ad criticizes the bill for taxing our benefits. "A new tax on the middle class is unacceptable," the ad says.
While "good, affordable health care is an economic and political imperative," the ad says, "the Senate Finance Committee bill is deeply flawed."
The ad also calls for the bill to make all employers pay a fair share of costs, to offer a public health insurance plan option to provide "competition to break the stranglehold of a handful of big insurance companies" and to relieve the cost burden on individuals and families.
The ad appeared yesterday in The Washington Post and other D.C.-based newspapers, according to a report by CNN.
Nearly 200 CWA activists visited Capitol Hill last week, pushing for our goals on health reform - and, especially, insisting on a reform bill that doesn't tax our benefits. Members also spoke out loud and clear with thousands of letters and phone calls, including nearly 9,000 calls to members of the Senate Finance Committee in less than three days.
"We're sounding the alarm on this," CWA's President Larry Cohen told a group of local activists last week, as they gathered at headquarters before fanning out to talk to members of the Senate and House. "It's like Paul Revere and the Revolution."
"If this tax goes into effect, we will get smashed," Cohen told activists from Arkansas, Colorado, Ohio and Washington, all in town as part of an AFL-CIO lobbying effort. The tax, in a bill being considered by the Senate Finance Committee, would cause employers to cut benefits in future bargaining, Cohen said, offsetting the great efforts CWA has made to hold onto benefits this year at AT&T and last year at Qwest.
"All that work is garbage compared to what this bill will do to our health care," Cohen said.
While the federal government needs to raise money to finance health reform, Cohen continued, the benefits tax is the wrong way to do it. Instead, he said, employers who don't offer good health coverage should have to pay a penalty of 8% of payroll, with the money used to help provide affordable coverage to those who need it. "Don't make those who pay pay more," Cohen said. "Make those who don't pay pay."
Over the next 10 years, the average impact of the tax would be $21,529 for each CWA member with family coverage, according to CWA's research department. And while the tax is supposed to target only high-cost insurance plans, as premiums increase with inflation, the tax would hit 40% of all workers with employer-sponsored coverage in 10 years, Frank Clemente, from the research department, told the local activists.
In addition to the CWA activists who joined the AFL-CIO lobbying efforts, about 150 members from District 13 - taking a four-hour bus ride from their district meeting in Harrisburg, Pa., spending 7 hours lobbying, and taking the four-hour ride back - lobbied members of Congress from Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey.
To learn about some of the participants in the lobbying effort, click here.
Among nearly 200 CWA activists who came to Washington last week to lobby for health reform were David and Kelly Arellanes, of Local 6508 in Little Rock, Ark., and Jeanine Maury of Local 7800 in Seattle. Their personal stories are dramatic demonstrations of why the health insurance system must change.
About five years ago, David and Kelly Arellanes and their children went on a family vacation. Kelly fell off a horse, hitting her head and suffering traumatic brain injury. She was helicoptered to the nearest hospital, where doctors told him they could do emergency brain surgery, and "if we decided not to do the surgery, she probably had less than an hour to live."
Then came a trauma of a different kind. UnitedHealthcare, their insurer, said that they wouldn't pay, because David hadn't notified them of the surgery. His cell phone records proved that he had. Then they said they wouldn't pay because the hospital was out-of-network, and Kelly should have come to Little Rock to get surgery in network. That, too, was dealt with.
But the Arellanes family didn't just have hassles, they had bills - several hundred thousand dollars worth. They were able to battle with the insurer to get some paid, but they also spent their savings and their daughter's college fund. "And we're supposed to have the Cadillac plan," David said, noting that his coverage, provided by AT&T, is one of the high-cost plans that would be subject to taxation under a Senate Finance Committee bill.
Jeanine Maury has been "a severe, chronic asthmatic since the day I was born." Her mother was a CWA member at what was then Pacific Northwest Bell, so she had good coverage, until she became an adult. She tried to buy an individual policy, but couldn't find one she could afford, because of her asthma. She got a job that had coverage, but didn't include the doctors who had cared for her all her life; she paid for them out of pocket.
That was okay until she was hospitalized in 1993 - and ended up with a bill for $60,000 for out-of-network care. It took her ten years to pay that off. Now she works for Qwest and has good coverage again, but feels that her job choice is limited. "I still have to choose my profession based on my health."
She figures that she could have bought a house for $60,000 in 1993. Instead, she spent the next decade digging out of debt. Because of her medical bills, she says, "I deferred my American dream for 10 years."
She's also seen the problems of his sister, Jill Cunningham, a diabetic. Jill got insurance, but it wouldn't cover her diabetes, a pre-existing condition, for nine months. During that time, she went untreated, "and her health deteriorated so much she couldn't work. Because of the denial of coverage, you took away a productive member of society, probably for life."
Not all the members who came to Capitol Hill had such compelling personal experiences with the health insurance system. Ronald Gay Jr., from Local 4300 in Youngstown, Oh., said he got involved in the campaign for health reform and the Employee Free Choice Act because it would be "good for the labor movement" and because he's always been interested in politics.
Now, he said, he's stepping up his efforts because of the distortions and misinformation that are concerning so many of the members of his local. "If we can continue to put out the correct information," he said, "we can get this across the finish line."
A majority of Democrats in the House of Representatives have signed a letter opposing a tax on benefits, Rep. Joe Courtney of Connecticut announced last week.
A tax on benefits is included in a health reform bill being considered by the Senate Finance Committee. CWA research shows that the proposed tax would do serious damage to our health coverage. In a survey, 89% of employers said they would respond to such a tax by cutting benefits. Lobbying by CWA and other unions has helped strengthen opposition to the proposal.
"I know for a fact that the White House believes in our principle: Make those who don't pay pay," CWA President Larry Cohen told Politico. Instead of taxing benefits, Cohen said, the money to help provide affordable coverage should come from a fee paid by employers who don't offer coverage.
As the letter by Courtney and more than 150 other House members, sent to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, says, the tax would initially hit workers in high-cost regions and those who work for small employers, because both groups pay higher premiums already. And as premiums rise at a rate well above inflation, the tax would "in the long-term, inevitably extend to more and more middle-income Americans across the country."
According to a report by Reuters, Courtney said at a press conference to release the letter, "This letter should send a clear signal to House Leadership that an excise tax on health plans will be an additional and substantial tax burden on working families.
"A majority of Democrats believes that is the wrong direction for health care reform."
Here's a list of representatives who signed the letter. If your representative is on the list, thank him or her. And if not, let him or her know that we don't want our benefits taxed.
