The privately-administered Medicare Advantage program is causing significant harm to America’s patients, providers, and health care system, according to a new report from Physicians for a National Health Program. Medicare Advantage harms patients’ health by limiting their access to treatments, physicians, and hospitals, while creating what the report calls “a massive profit machine” for insurers.
This year’s presidential election is the starkest demonstration yet of how the two corporate parties which dominate American politics prevent working people from using our democracy to improve our conditions.
The only way out of this two-party trap is a strong and politically independent labor movement, with millions more working people organized into unions and other worker organizations independent of the existing political parties. Only then will we be able to force politicians to address the needs of the working class and then hold them accountable once they are in office, not only through elections but through other forms of political action such as marches, strikes, occupations and mass civil disobedience.
Saying, “The time has come to cancel all medical debt,” Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) announced legislation in May that would eliminate the over $200 billion in medical debt held by millions of Americans. Companion legislation was introduced in the House of Representatives by Congressman Ro Khanna (D-CA).
UE Local 150 members from the Department of Health and Human Services and the University of North Carolina held a political action day at the state legislature on Thursday, May 16 to urge their representatives to take action to improve working conditions for public-sector workers around the state. Members gave speeches and chanted outside the capitol on the front lawn to call attention to their unlivable wages and working conditions.
“Our Congresswoman Summer Lee fights tirelessly for … the working class people and their families in our district, in our state and in our country,” said Local 610 President Antwon Gibson. “UE Local 610 is proud to once again endorse the People’s Champion, Summer Lee, for Congress.” The UE Eastern Region also endorsed Lee’s re-election campaign.
A new ad urging Congressman Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) to stop supporting efforts to cut Social Security and Medicare features retired UE Local 1107 officer Joni Anderson.
“I spent almost 30 years on my feet working hard at the factory,” Anderson says in the video. “I paid into Social Security with every paycheck.”
“Derrick Van Orden’s plan would slash Medicare and Social Security,” she continues in a voice-over, “but Van Orden voted for huge tax breaks for corporations.”
On Thursday, March 14, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) convened the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions to discuss new legislation he has introduced to establish a 32-hour work week with no loss in pay. UE has long supported shortening the work week, and UE policy includes the demand for just such legislation.
The first panelist to testify at the hearing was UAW President Shawn Fain, whose union “raised the flag” for a 32-hour work week during their historic “stand up strike” against the Big Three automakers last year.
On February 22nd, the National Labor Network for Ceasefire held its first public event, a webinar with UAW president Shawn Fain and NEA president Becky Pringle. Shawn Fain was the first panelist to speak and took the question head on of why an international conflict should concern US workers. “Our fight is a fight for all of humanity, whether it is a contract campaign or an issue like this.”
One of the key enforcement mechanisms of job-killing trade deals is a secretive court system called Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) — and there are two actions you can take today to help root this nefarious tool of the bosses out of our trade regime.
UE is one of seven national unions which announced the formation of the National Labor Network for Ceasefire (NLNC) today, along with over two hundred local unions. The aim of the network is to “end the death and devastation” in the Middle East, and to expand support for the ceasefire among unions nationally.
“This is the biggest expression for peace by the labor movement in a full generation,” UE General President Carl Rosen told a press conference in February, as Chicago-area labor leaders successfully pressed their city council to pass a resolution in support of a ceasefire.