Politico points to how the issue of Bernie Sanders medicare-for-all has problems for some union members around the country who have good healthcare coverage that the negotiated hard for….
Health care benefits are really important to many union workers — important enough to give up pay raises or even to walk off the job to keep the coverage they’ve negotiated.
Now the future of those benefits is at the heart of an emerging split among 2020 Democratic candidates over how to remake American health care. Former Vice President Joe Biden says union members shouldn’t have to give up their employer plans if they like them, while Sen. Bernie Sanders is arguing that union workers would still come out ahead under “Medicare for All,” which would shift all Americans into a government-run plan.
The fight puts Sanders, a declared democratic socialist, at odds with some in the labor movement, where many union workers already have insurance with pretty good benefits. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who is also seeking the nomination, is in a similar situation because of her support for both Medicare for All and organized labor.
Already, there’s a growing divide among unions as to whether to back Sanders’ universal coverage proposal. National Nurses United, the largest union of registered nurses, are very vocal supporters of Medicare for All. But the International Association of Fire Fighters opposes eliminating employer-based coverage.
Still other unions, such as the Service Employees International Union, say they support all efforts to expand coverage to more people.
Roughly 10.5% of workers — or 14.7 million people — were union members in 2018, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s about half the share that were unionized 35 years earlier.
Some 95% of union workers had access to employer medical benefits in 2019, compared to 68% of non-union workers, according to the bureau’s data. And they were more likely to participate in the plans, with 84% of union staffers signing up, compared to 54% of their non-union counterparts.
“Bargaining for health benefits is a distinguishing characteristic that labor unions hold out as an important variable as to why you would want to be a union member,” said David Brenner, national director of multi-employer consulting at Segal Consulting, a leader in the field….
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Only 10.5% of Workers belong to a Union. Mondale ran a pro-union campaign in 1984 ( when union membership was much higher) and the campaign failed miserably.
Lower wage workers don’t belong to a union, and they are the ones who need healthcare.
True that!…..
You DID see my post on Biden and Warren out there with the UAW people , eh?
I saw it
Zreebs would probably understand the rationale or reasoning behind this better than I, but one of those delayed-fuse elements of the current ACA (Obamacare) is a huge tax on the so-called “Cadillac” health plans (which I think means those that actually cover all health care costs with minimal exclusions, co-pays and deductibles, rather than the 70% bronze, 80% silver or 90% gold levels of almost all the ACA plans, but something like platinum or close to 100%).
For better or worse, the Trump administration has waived or postponed that Cadillac tax. It has also cancelled the individual and employer health-coverage mandate, which is the only way to keep ACA solvent. But the latter can be explained no only by its general unpopularity but also as one of the ways the Administration can undermine Obamacare if it can’t repeal it altogether.
As for the health plans, the article correctly points out that (just as with the pensions that are always under threat) unions bargained away other more-immediate things like pay raises or vacations in order to get good health coverage.