health care

  • As Toxic Health Care Debate Peters Out, Labor's Medicare-for-All Activists Dig In
    Jane Slaughter
    Mar 20 2010 - 1:02am
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    Whether Congress passes a weak health care bill this month or puts the debate out of its misery altogether, labor’s single-payer activists are showing no signs of slinking out of sight. . . .

  • Health Care Bill's Hidden Pitfalls

    The Obama and Congressional versions of health insurance legislation—assuming that a bill will pass—will affect workers in ways both obvious and not so obvious. At the moment, House Democrats are making their last changes to a smaller “reconciliation” bill that they would vote on either at the same time they consider the Senate’s version or separately.

    The bill’s final details aren’t yet known, especially on contentious issues dividing the chambers, such as abortion coverage.

  • 'Toxic' Health Bill or No, Labor's 'Medicare for All' Activists Dig In

    When I told friends I was on my way to the Labor Campaign for Single-Payer conference, held last weekend, they all said, “I bet that’ll be a bunch of long faces.” I predicted not—these were people who’d always known the health care reform debate in Congress would come up short. Yet the 124 delegates to the March 5-7 conference in Washington were upbeat.

  • Anger at Insurance Companies Pulls 1000s to Protest

    As health insurance lobbyists holed up in the Ritz-Carlton behind dozens of police in riot gear, thousands of health care activists surrounded the downtown D.C. hotel in a peaceful but pointed demonstration of anger and support for health care reform.

  • A Nurse in Haiti's "Unfathomable Sea of Need"

    It is true what they say: no words or photos can describe the enormity of what we saw in Haiti. Nine of us nurses, eight from Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, just spent 10 days here volunteering at the public hospital in Port au Prince, working the night shifts.

  • Labor Needs a New Survival Plan—Now
    For trade unionists already frustrated and disappointed with Obama, the collateral damage of the Democrat's defeat in Massachusetts is far worse than giving up on the unworkable mess of his health plan. As one dismayed union official in Washington, D.C., told me: “It’s the end of labor law reform for another generation.” There's no time to waste: We need a “Plan B” for more “bargaining to organize” that would better use remaining pockets of union strength before they disappear.
  • ‘There Are No Tea-baggers in Soup Lines’

    Auto workers outshone the tea-party types as dueling demonstrations took place in the snow outside the Detroit Auto Show today. Small numbers of auto workers gathered to say government should use its role in the auto bailout to direct the factories toward job-creating green products such as high-speed trains and wind turbines—and should enact Medicare for All.

  • NUHW is Decisive in Santa Rosa, SEIU Tries to Postpone Defeat

    Workers capped a six year campaign to organize Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital tonight, with 283 voting to join the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) against 263 votes for "no union."

  • Labor Bargains for Too Little on Health Care, Gets Even Less
    Jane Slaughter
    Nov 23 2009 - 6:01pm

    Single-payer supporters were sidelined from the get-go this year. With a public option now in the balance, "Medicare for All" activists keep building, worried that incomplete reforms could do more harm than good.

  • Should Single-Payer Activists Back Down?

    Despite many expressions of support and much advocacy for a single-payer health plan, it hasn't captivated the country in the lengthy health care debate nor moved a bill through Congress. The onus is on single-payer supporters to “take a step back," an AFL staffer argued.