Labor's messy health-care bargain
by Harold Meyerson
Notice that last line - they exempt the president from their criticisms. If you read the whole column you see how much time and money they spent electing the Man, how can they now criticize him?
The Net roots is up in arms about the Senate's version of health-care reform, with many rooters demanding it be voted down. The liberal establishmentarians lament the compromises they were compelled to accept but support the bill's passage. In between the two, indignant and stuck, is organized labor.
"There's an excise tax on policies, but there's no public option to hold down the cost of those policies," says Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers. "There's no Medicare buy-in, no pay-or-play mandate for employers. There's no Canadian reimportation to hold down drug costs, on the grounds of 'safety.' No one gets sick from Canadian reimported drugs," adds Gerard, who is Canadian. "I know a guy who got sick from a Chinese-made ingredient in an American drug, but there's no restriction on Chinese drug imports."
Gerard is hardly alone in his criticisms. Labor believes, rightly, that the cost controls in the Senate bill come chiefly from insurance policy holders (among them, labor's members), rather than from insurance and drug companies. Both the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union have condemned these provisions, while hailing the bill's epochal creation of affordable health insurance for 30 million Americans. They're careful, too, to exempt President Obama from their criticisms. Read the rest.
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