Meeting ALERT

Due to the inclement weather, the Kennebec Valley Organization's Health Care Team has postponed their meeting to next Thursday, February 26, 6 to 8 pm, at the Saint Francis Parish Hall on Elm Street in Waterville.

House Meeting on Health Care Reform

Come to a House Meeting on

Health Care Reform

Tuesday, February 24th at 6 pm

at the home of

Sasha Shunk

70 Frost Street, Portland

We all have a story to tell about our experience with America's failed health care system, or know someone who does. Come hear ours, share yours, and learn how you can work with others in your community for

real reform now.

Now is our chance for real needed changes in our health care system, and MSEA-SEIU's Care Division is spearheading the drive to make it happen. Come celebrate our recent victories and hear about the next steps in our movement to rebuild the middle class, restore families' voice at work, and guarantee every person's right to quality, affordable healthcare.

Hope to see you there - bring along your friends!

Questions or Directions? call Mike Roland at 253-5218

Health Care Reform House Meeting

Come to a House Meeting on

Health Care Reform

Monday, February 23rd at 6 pm

at the home of

Kathy and Brian Beland

26 Wilson Place, Augusta

We all have a story to tell about our experience with America's

failed health care system, or know someone who does.

Come hear ours, share yours, and learn how you can

work with others in your community for real reform now.

Now is our chance for real needed changes in our health care system, and MSEA-SEIU'S Care Division is spearheading the drive to make it happen. Come celebrate our recent victories and hear about the next steps in our movement to rebuild the middle class, restore families' voice at work, and guarantee every person's right to quality, affordable health care.

Hope to see you there - bring along your friends!

Questions or Directions? call Mike Roland at 253-5218

Adult Education Web Portal Launched

The Maine Adult Education Association launched the Maine Adult Education website, which offers a searchable, comprehensive list of courses and programs offered throughout the State. The site also enables Mainers to register for courses. The Maine Department of Education collected fall registration data from around the state adn found that those reporting showed a 29% increase in registration over the previous year. According to the Maine Adult Education Association, since the site went online on January 5, it has logged more than 11,000 visitors and about 500 online registrations. The Maine Adult Education website is located at http://www.maineadulted.org. an email from Representative David Cotta

Two Polls show Public Doesn't Buy Insurance Industry's Spin on Health Care

by Mike Hall, Feb. 3, 2009 Our continuing series examining health care reform proposals, issues, opinions and surveys today takes a look at what the public thinks about the private insurance industry. And it’s not good news for the big for-profit corporations that are doing their darndest to roadblock meaningful reform. Two recent polls show the public is not buying what the private insurance industry is peddling. The AFL-CIO has not endorsed a specific plan but has established certain principles around which any plan should be built (click here for more details). One of the key elements must be a public health insurance plan option—such as the one President Obama is proposing as an alternative to private insurance. The insurance companies and right-wingers have teamed up to try to kill such a plan and convince the public it would drive up their costs, limit coverage and leave millions uninsured. A large majority of those surveyed told Lake Research Partners that a public health insurance plan option might just be the medicine needed to shape up the private, for-profit insurance industry and improve its performance. The Lake survey found: 62 percent of respondents believe a public health insurance plan option would spend less on profits and administration and force private insurers to compete. But only 28 percent believe the insurance industry’s claim that such a plan would be a “big, government bureaucracy.” 60 percent believe that if private insurers are really more efficient than government, as they claim, then they wouldn’t have any trouble competing with a public health insurance plan option. Only 23 percent buy the industry’s assertion that a public health insurance option would have an unfair advantage over private plans. Only 27 percent believe the claim that a public health insurance option will cause millions of people to be dumped from their private coverage, and just 26 percent believe such a plan will force people into lower-quality care, including rationing and long waits. Meanwhile, a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health shows most people say it’s time for the government to tighten up the rules on how private health insurance companies do business. One of the major complaints working families have expressed about the private insurance industry is its nearly universal refusal to cover anyone with a “pre-existing condition.” But the Kaiser/Harvard survey found that 72 percent of respondents favor requiring insurance companies to cover those with prior illnesses, even if it means healthier customers have to pay higher premiums. Also, 65 percent are in favor of a government rule limiting insurance companies’ administrative costs, while 62 percent say the government should cap insurance company profits. The Kaiser/Harvard findings show that the private, for-profit insurance industry’s years-long campaign to paint a government role in health care reform as a deadly intrusion on the sacred and “efficient” free market—remember “Harry and Louise”—isn’t working like it used to. The public once may have bought that argument against government regulation, but the tide is turning. A majority, 51 percent, say there is too little government regulation of health care costs, twice as many as say there is too much government regulation. You can bet there will be a ferocious campaign by the private insurance companies and big health care corporations to fight any regulation of costs. We’ve got a lot of work to do to counter that. Click here to read what a group of small business owners have to say about a public insurance plan option as part of health care reform. Click here to take a look at proposals by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC) calling for a single-payer system and recommendations from Health CEOs for Health Reform. Click here to read about University of California professor Jacob Hacker’s call for creation of a public health care insurance plan as an option for workers and families who either have private insurance coverage or no coverage at all. 2 Comments Paul B on 04.02.2009 at 00:31 Thankfully we won’t have to contend with the corrupt insurance industry shill Tom Daschle and pretend he is on our side and for real health care reform as part of the supposedly progressive Obama administration. The former Senator used his status to become an obscenely overpaid lobbyist for the very ‘health care’ industry that has left millions uninsured and the ones who are insured paying exorbitant prices for corporate ‘health care’. Daschle profited mightily and - surprise - forgot to pay taxes! shouldn’t he be on trial? He’s no better than fellow Republicrat Bill Frist. Let’s tell Obama to appoint Rose Ann deMoro to be HHS Secretary, or Dr Quentin Young of Physicians for a National Health Program. The we’d see real “Change we can believe in…..’ topgun on 04.02.2009 at 11:34 There are a couple of serious problems here. First, effective regulation of the health insurance industry would require a huge, costly administrative bureaucracy and, more to the point, the political will to withstand a $12 billion industry hell-bent on neutralizing its efforts at regulation. Second, creating a public option while leaving the private insurance system intact raises the prospect of a “two-tier” system in which the public plan becomes a dumping ground for everybody private insurers find unprofitiable to cover, thereby raising its costs significantly. An all-inclusive public plan would be cheaper, more efficient, and more equitable. A public option may prove to be the best we can get right now, but we’ll never know if we’re not willling to put up a fight for something better. Organized labor should put up a fight for HR 676 rather than caving in before the battle has even begun. AFL-CIO NOW Blog, Feb. 4, 2009

SCHIP Won Reauthorization

Thursday, Jan. 29, 2009, the Senate reauthorized the State Children's Health Insurance Program by a vote of 66-32. The bill passed by the Senate will provide critical health care to 11 million children. President Obama is expected to sign the bill into law immediately. This is the first victory in a long fight to win health care for everyone in America. I want to personally thank you for your efforts. Your phone calls to your Senators helped speed this bill to easy passage. Next, the Senate will take on President Obama's economic recovery plan, which was passed by the House the other day. That bill includes billions of dollars in investments for health care. We'll have more details on that and how you can help soon. After we pass the economic recovery plan, we'll be ready to go for the big one - quality, affordable health care for all. Once again, thank you for your efforts. It was essential to get this bill passed, but this points to the urgent need for real comprehensive health care reform. This is the year we can win quality, affordable health care for everyone in America.

AFL-CIO President: Health Care Reform Critical to Economic Recovery

by James Parks, Jan. 30, 2000 Reforming the nation’s health care system, including cost controls, is a critical part of any national economic fix, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said today, and he urged lawmakers and the White House to make it an urgent priority. Speaking to the 21st Annual Conference on Social Insurance, Fiscal Responsibility, and Economic Growth in Washington, D.C., Sweeney said the union movement is ratcheting up its commitment to creating a national system of affordable health care: This year, we’re adding a sword’s point to that commitment: We have no time left for dithering, we’re in a perilous economic ditch, and we will not dig our way out and fix our economy until we fix our health care system. The conference was hosted by the National Academy of Social Insurance, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization made up of the nation’s leading experts on social insurance issues, such as Social Security, Medicare and workers’ compensation. Its mission is to promote understanding of how social insurance contributes to economic security and a vibrant economy. Click here to read Sweeney’s entire speech. Any health care reform must not only provide dependable delivery of service, Sweeney said, but contain costs as well. In health care reform, the single toughest issue is cost control—without cost savings, the debates over financing and the relative roles of public and private insurance programs are useless. National health care reform without cost controls is like moving furniture into a burning house. Workers understand that the nation’s health care crisis contributed in large part to the current economic collapse, Sweeney said. We in labor know the sad history all too well—we’ve been trying to bargain good wages for our members for all those years, and having to forego pay increases to maintain our benefits and keep premiums and co-payments under control. The bottom line is that health care costs have been picking the pockets of working families for a long time. After basic expenses, families have been left with less and less money to spend and save, and that has undermined the corner of our economy we call consumer spending. All stakeholders in the health care system—government, employers, insurers, workers, the medical community and pharmaceutical companies—will have to accept “their responsibilities when it comes to controlling costs and guaranteeing quality care,” Sweeney added. For the first time in many years, we have the political advantage when it comes to meaningful health care reform, and we must seize the moment. We must do it not only for the sake of the young, the old, the poor, the working poor, and the middle class who are depending on us, but in order to turn our economy around and make it work for everyone. 2 comments mustanguy on 31.01.2009 at 02:11 Thank GOD we have a leader that is on the side of the working man. I hope that all sides will work together to get us out of this mess. Wow when will the CEO’s wake up ,I think they are all brain dead, as to what they have done getting big money for to make a company go broke. We might have to take over ther jobs. a roadkill has more brains. TrueDemocrat on 02.02.2009 at 12:18 Plan Congressional Visits During Presidents’ Day Recess Congressman John Conyers re-introduced HR 676 into the 111th Congress on January 26th. The bill keeps the same number, HR 676, as it has since it was first introduced in 2003. Action Alert: Because this is a new Congress, representatives who co-sponsored HR 676 in the 110th Congress need to sign on again. Plus we need to get many more. Please make an appointment to see your representative over the Presidents’ Day recess that begins Feb. 13 and lasts until Feb. 22. Representatives will be in their home districts, and we need to ask them to sign on to and speak up for HR 676—and, of course, to vote for the Employee Free Choice Act. Please make sure your representative has a copy of the HR 676 resolution passed by your union. New HR 676 Improves Worker Protection An important improvement in the latest version of HR 676 is the expansion of protection for workers in insurance companies, doctors’ offices, hospitals and other work sites who are displaced or whose jobs are eliminated due to reduced administration. The new HR 676 guarantees to these workers, in addition to first priority in retraining and job placement in the new system, the right to benefits equal to their full current salary for up to two years while they make the transition. HR 676 will have a job creating impact, but the jobs created will not be the current type of billing and clerical jobs, nor jobs related to denying benefits. HR 676 is a pro-worker bill which, for the first time, will guarantee that no worker, ever again, will lose their health coverage! At this link, you will find the 33 who have already signed on as co-sponsors of HR 676, including four newly elected Democrats (Massa, Polis, Pingree, Tonko). http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d111:1:./temp/~bdxQ2O:@@@P/bss/111search.html HR 676 would institute a single payer health care system by expanding a greatly improved Medicare system to everyone residing in the U. S. HR 676 would cover every person for all necessary medical care including prescription drugs, hospital, surgical, outpatient services, primary and preventive care, emergency services, dental, mental health, home health, physical therapy, rehabilitation (including for substance abuse), vision care, hearing services including hearing aids, chiropractic, durable medical equipment, palliative care, and long term care. HR 676 ends deductibles and co-payments. HR 676 would save hundreds of billions annually by eliminating the high overhead and profits of the private health insurance industry and HMOs. In the 110th Congress, HR 676 had 93 co-sponsors in addition to Conyers. HR 676 has been endorsed by 481 union organizations in 49 states including 118 Central Labor Councils and Area Labor Federations and 39 state AFL-CIO’s (KY, PA, CT, OH, DE, ND, WA, SC, WY, VT, FL, WI, WV, SD, NC, MO, MN, ME, AR, MD-DC, TX, IA, AZ, TN, OR, GA, OK, KS, CO, IN, AL, CA, AK, MI, MT, NE, NY, NV & MA). This is what Sweeney does not want! Call your congress person and she or he to sign on as a co-sponsor for this legislation, the answer to the health care crisis. AFL-CIO NOW blog Feb. 2, 2009 FYI Our Union - MSEA-SEIU - has also endorsed and supports HR676. The board of directors made that endorsement at their July 2008 meeting, thanks to the good work of Penny Whitney-Asdourian and Scott Neumeyer.