Setting the Record Straight on Obama, Health Care and Unions

If you're following the politics of the Iowa Democratic caucus contest, you're familiar with the dust-up surrounding Barack Obama's health care plan, AFSCME's critique of it, his labeling of union's as "special interests" (as I read in a recent Paul Krugman column), the anti-government rhetoric the Senator has used to defend the absence of a mandate from his health insurance plan and the fact that it does not cover 15 million Americans.

Let's start with Obama's health insurance plan: it is the only "universal" health insurance proposal on the presidential trail that does not cover every American. The simple fact is that it leaves 15 million Americans without the medical care they need. Hillary Clinton and John Edwards' plans do not leave anyone behind. This is the difference that the AFSCME political action committee has pointed out in the direct mail piece that the Obama campaign has been complaining about in the media.

What's more, as Krugman has pointed out, Obama has used anti-government rhetoric to defend his position on health care and Social Security. In so doing, he makes the right-wing's argument about public services and unions. This is unacceptable, especially at a time when it is so important to promote a vibrant trade movement.

People can debate the details of the candidate's plans but the biggest difference that matters is that Barack Obama's plan does not cover 15 million people. There are clearly different policy ways to achieve the goals of controlling costs and providing quality health care for all. But you can't cover everyone if your plan does not even intend to do so.

AFSCME has fought for universal health care for decades. Our goal is simple: to protect and improve health care for those who have it, and to provide it for 47 million Americans who don't. And we are hardly a "special interest" when it comes to this or any issue. As most people know, union members have bargained hard for affordable health insurance that provides high quality care. Our members have fought for these benefits for years and their contracts have helped to set the standard for what every American should have.

When it comes to health care, our union and the labor movement in general are not a "special interest." We fight for the general interest. Our campaign for health care for all is about our commitment to a better America, and no one in America should go without the medical care they need as so many in our country do now.

The Obama campaign's criticism of our political action committee and some of the so-called 527 efforts, such as the one organized in support of Edwards, is troubling because they are suggesting that workers are somehow a special interest, just like insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry. That's obviously absurd on its face. It is workers who built this country and it is their unions that created America's middle-class.

We are an important part of the Democratic base that's critical to making the Democratic nominee our next president. Senator Obama and his staff and consultants should understand this. After all, Obama's national field director is a former AFSCME staffer who ran our independent expenditure program in the last election cycle. And the director of his Iowa campaign played a key role running an interest group AFSCME and other progressive organizations helped create to defeat President Bush's proposal to privatize Social Security (it's now working on a number of other important issues).

I don't understand Senator Obama's confusion about the difference between special interests and ordinary American's like the Iowa voters who will caucus on January 3. He certainly was not confused when he accepted our union's PAC money and volunteers and other support in his campaigns for the State Senate and the U.S. Senate. What's more, it does not help the Democratic nominee, regardless of who she or he is, to have him criticize the activities of workers and their unions now – whether those activities are member education, 527 efforts or independent expenditures – when they'll be so critical to the outcome of the general election later.

It's important for all of the Democratic candidates and their supporters to remember that we're all on the same side with the same goal – taking back the White House for America's working families and making it the peoples' house again.

Comments

[Nutcase]

This is a paid political ad from the Clinton camp. It is correct in much of its criticism of Obama but it misses the point.

Both Clinton and Obama take large sums from the insurance (and other ) industry. Both have lobbyists for the insurance (and other) industry on their staffs.

Both have plans that increase the income of the insurance companies. They want to keep in control the very people and companies that put us 37th in world health, even below Cuba and several other 3rd world countries.

Although this ad came from the Clinton camp, the Obama camp posts their share of similar blogs. Neither should be on HuffPo. The MSM is the place they need to be. Or, is there a difference any more?

[LeeFromVA]

All I'm hearing is blah, blah, blah. Do you really think Obama supporters will switch to Hillary because of her health care plan? She's a Senator for God's sake. Let her submit it as a bill and then President Obama can sign it into law. The next President needs to be a visionary leader, not some health care nerd.

[mwpeters]

Gerald McEntee seems to be doing the exact opposite of setting things straight.

The position presented here is very close to an 180 degree turn from AFSME's previous pronouncements on health care alternatives. A pretty interesting analysis of this contradiction can be found in a Mother Jones post by David Corn and Jonathan Stein "Playing Politics with Health Care" dated December 20th.

http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2007/12/obama-clinton-afscme-mandates.html

This matches up with my own recall as a 20 plus year member and past AFSCME office holder. AFSCME was long opposed to the kind of mandates they are now criticizing Obama for excluding and praising Hillary for including.

So what's up? Without any explanation from AFSCME for the reversal, I find myself wondering what kind of wink-wink, buddy-buddy arrangement is present with the Clinton campaign. Nothing incredibly new or terrifying about such things, but I do wish AFSCME would stick to core interests and not try to develop alliance deals with candidates so early in the selection process.

AFSCME claiming it should not be called a "special interest" seems ridiculous to me as such a claim contradicts the very mission of the union. AFSCME is organized to place the interests of its members first, and the union persists to the degree that it is able to convince its members it is doing something of that sort.

While a union is organized to represent "worker interests" rather than "administrative and investor interests", it still does have interests it wants to promote above other general society concerns. In the case of AFSCME it represents the "special interests" of a subset of workers, those employed and organized by various units of government. Their concerns are valid and worthy of consideration, but they undeniably are a "special group" with "special interests". And thus AFSCME's interests will sometimes be at odds with the broader public interest.

[drlenamarie]

Why should anyone believe Hillary can get her act together on health care issues now when she couldn't do it when Bill was President?

Why should anyone believe that Hillary will actually implement her plan to cover all Americans when she accepts so much money from private health care companies?

[Kane]

Just after Bill Clinton was elected, he convened a meeting of economists, CEOs, labor leaders and many others in Little Rock. The purpose of the meeting was to argue out what should be done about the ailing economy, with many of the ideas expressed there later becoming part of Clinton's successful 1993 economic recovery package. The whole thing was on television.

Sound familiar? This is essentially what Obama is proposing for health care after he's elected. If Hillary Clinton had done this on health care in 1993"instead of convening a secret task force"she might have been able to build a stronger public case for reform.

Edwards and Krugman think that's naïve. They want the evil drug and insurance industries excluded from any of these conversations. Edwards surely knows better than this. The drug industry that he seeks to bar from a seat at the table is the same industry working to save his wife Elizabeth's life and that of anyone else with a serious disease, including me. The answer to price-gouging is to force these companies to negotiate drug prices with the government, a reform any Democratic president would quickly enact.

Ideally, health insurance companies should be eliminated altogether. But a single payer plan isn't viable politically. The only option is to curb their power and expand coverage through more regulation.

When I asked Edwards how any agreement could be reached without at least talking to these players in the system, he said he would offer a seat at the table to members of Congress who represent their interests. In other words, it's OK to have the congressional stooges there, but not the interests that pull their strings?

Obama's idea is a better one: Get every special interest out in the open on television, where the new president can cross-examine them and expose their phony rationalizations for charging $100 a pill or denying coverage to sick people.

Then, having triumphed over the drug and insurance companies in the court of public opinion, the legislative victories will follow.

Jonathan Alter -
http://www.newsweek.com/id/80882/page/1

[Kane]

One thing is perfectly clear, Hillary's campaign is determined to fight to the bitter end, even if it means destroying every Democratic presidential candidate and taking the party down with her.

Let there be no mistake; Hillary, the DLC, and Gerald McEntee want to NAFTAtise Health Care. It is their opinion that 45 million Americans are without health insurance not because they can't afford it, but because they don't have access to insurance companies.

[CroatianCritter]

I remember back in the 1980s or early 90s when California made it law to carry auto insurance. After forking over probably close to $10,000 dollars over my lifetime, I have never gotten into an accident and have nothing to show for it but money missing from my bank account. Obama's plan is brilliant because it is voluntary. My wife and I currently make $55,000 and we do not have health insurance due to the $5000 deductible and the $120 withheld from my check every 2 weeks. It is cheaper for me to pay for the emergencies as they come instead of investing in the health care system. If I am "FORCED" by legislation to get healthcare, I could legitimately lose my home. It seems like forcing people to get health care is a form of corporate socialism. Obama's plan is good because it creates competition. He will force these companies to compete for their services. This should naturally drop prices without the price fixing that would occur if the coverage was mandated. Obama's plan is the true free market plan and if you believe in medical being overinflated, the market should adjust and he will allow this to occur before creating mandates for coverage. Personally, the prices need to be affordable before coverage is mandated for every American. This idea of "universal" has been the curse of the Democrats and unions alike. They continue to act in socialistic ways that are more beneficial to the corporations than the individual. If I want to opt out of a goverment plan, I should be allowed too. Until the Democrats understand this, none of their policies will be universally loved by the American people.

[army193]

Obama will get us to single payer with a 60% of the vote.............He is a Progressive and will bring the majority of the other side with us.

[Professornitpick]

No matter what, a universal health care plan, offered through insurance companies is insidious.

People say that it the only possible compromise, and a one payer system will not be possible. I myself do not like a Single payer system or one offered through insurance companies.

Here is why.

I have a good health care plan. I never looked at my bills until this year, since I has a FSA so I totaled my medical expenses for the year.

Here is what I was surprised to see.

The bills had three amounts. Which were something like this

1. Amount billed $800

2. Amount allowed by insurance $160

3. Amount owed by patient (copay) $25

This was a very disturbing discovery. Simply put it means that, since you had insurance the doctor and the insurance company agreed to a fee of only $160 and your copay of $25.

Now if you were to go to the same doctor and you did not have insurance, you would have been charged $800.

Do you see what is going on? There is a collusion (probably illegal, I will have to look it up), between the doctors and insurance companies. The doctors are satisfied with providing the same service to Insurance holders at a fraction of the cost of what they will charge a person who does not have Insurance.

I always thought that Insurance paid the full difference. In this case we see that the poor who do not have insurance are being screwed over twice. One they do not have insurance, and second they have to pay about 300% more for access to the same service.

It is shameless indeed.

From my bills it looks like I should have been able to easily pay what the insurance paid for my office visits, labs, and a surgical procedure I had to undergo.

Unless some politician brings this to the notice of people, I am going to think of all of them as crooks. HRC, BHO, JE, and the whole lot of them.

[cloudy]

HERE's the $ quote, from Ben Smith at Politico (found, among other things, elsewhere at Huffpo)

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0108/7652.html

(McEntee cited a quote from New York Times columnist Paul Krugman in which Obama appears to refer to labor unions as "special interests," but Obama has never said that directly.)

[cloudy]

If, as I have read elsewhere, there was some correction to the claim that Obama had tagged unions as 'special interests' (apparently per Krugman), then that correxn should go up on the board AS SOON AS IT IS PUBLIC. And I saw it hours ago, I think somewhere on Democratic Underground.

On the other hand, you never know how accurate ...

[Tellmethetruth]

Obama has made it clear he only takes money from corporations, doesn't support unions, and is anti-worker.

Now it is time for the 92% of Americans who get a W-2 because they labor for a living, to speak in the election. How clear must it be that Obama isn't interested in the worker of this country.

Anyone in 2008 but Obama.

[isis]

I like your group but to be honest the postcards you've been sending me knocking Obama reminded me of the ones that the US Chamber of Commerce sent out against Edwards in 2004. It would have been better to just focus on what you liked about Edwards.

[NABNYC]

All these articles that start with "let's set the record straight" -- always are just arguments about why someone should not like some candidate. It has nothing to do with anything straight. For heaven's sake, all the candidates are tired and say stupid things. Can we stop prancing on nuances, stop being quite so "cute," and start being honest? (Ha).

Hillary's "mandate" will compel people to buy insurance when they can't afford to. If we want to provide healthcare for everyone, we should just provide it and stop feeding our poor citizens over to the woodchipper that is the private health insurance. They don't care about the citizens. They are funding Hillary's campaign.

And I'm disappointed any union would support Hillary for many reasons, not the least of which is that working people cannot afford to pay insurance companies, and they give millions to Hillary to bribe her to keep it the same way.

Actually Edwards is the best of the top 3, since he at least allows a tax credit for the premiums paid for moderate and lower-income people. Hillary, on the other hand, gives not one dollar to normal people, but gives millions to the insurance, drug, doctor, and hospital industries in her proposal. No wonder they support her.

[DrColes]

The only thing that is broken in health care is the cost of health care and no one is addressing this problem. The government caused the problem with health care cost crises in America by over socializing (with mandates) medicine to the extent it is not completive. http://www.InteliOrg.com/