It was no surprise that Rep. Loretta Sanchez (CD 47) supported government-run healthcare in yesterday’s “town hall meeting” (conference call). However, the “blue dog” Democrat’s support for socialization stands in stark contrast to her opposition to bank bailouts only one year ago. It appears that Sanchez has been put on a leash by her Big Labor masters.
Big Labor is pushing hard for government-run healthcare. Locally, they are employing a front group, Health Access California (HAC). HAC’s Board includes representatives of Big Labor and the radical left (including ACORN). Overpowerful government worker unions are well represented, including the SEIU, the California teacher unions (CTA and CFT), and the AFSCME.
HAC advocates costly state mandates that make healthcare more expensive. HAC recently condemned the governor for vetoing costly insurance mandates, claiming that the governor was “[siding] with the insurance industry”. Of course, they cynically ignore the fact that consumers pay the cost of these mandates through higher rates. While HAC claims they want to increase access and reduce costs, their policies do the opposite – reducing access by increasing costs.
Nevertheless, HAC is just a front for Big Labor – the New Tammany Hall, a corrupt government worker union machine that buys and controls votes. Unlike private sector unions, government worker unions are able to sit at both sides of the bargaining table by electing the politicians who control their pay. In the 2008 election cycle, the SEIU (alone) spent $42.4 million in independent expenditures on top of $73 million in labor contributions.
Loretta Sanchez is a big recipient of Big Labor cash. Her Big Labor donors include several unions with multiple officers and members that “have been convicted since 2001 of felonies ranging from embezzlement, falsifying official reports to government, mail fraud and conspiracy.” Thus, it is no surprise that Sanchez was co-sponsor of Big Labor’s “Employee Free Choice Act” (Card Check) that would have eliminated the secret ballot in union-certification elections.
Loretta Sanchez is no “blue dog”. Instead, she is a poodle for Big Labor.
She is actually representing the wishes of the majority of the voters in her district.
Latest polling nationally shows that an increasing majority wants a public option included in the plan to create competition.
Labor needs support, especially in the private sector.
Around half support a “public option” (with the slim majority falling into the margin of error). What is surprising is that the number isn’t higher given the promise of “free healthcare”. That’s why Big Labor sets up front organizations (concealing its identity) who push the idea that you can get something for nothing.
Of course, nothing is free. Free healthcare means that someone else is paying for it – future generations. We are saddling our children with massive debts that will consume ever larger portions of GDP (or put differently, ever larger years that our children must labor) to pay for our healthcare. Future generations (workers and businesses) will be worse off because the taxes paid today or in the future must necessarily reduce savings and investment. The math is simple.
And, of course, “public option” supporters don’t realize that this will destroy choice and competition, increase costs (because government programs never control costs) and reduce quality.
Labor needs support? It seems to have plenty of taxpayer dollars to fund its agenda.
SInce in many areas of the country there is no choice or competition, like North-East Ohio where I spent the last few years, creating a government option would be the only competition there and in many areas.
My only option that would cover me since I have high Blood pressure was an out of state company that would pay up to 2 million lifetime after I paid the 1st 5,000 per year. Which I was able to purchase this across state lines under current laws.
The founding fathers called for the right to pursue life, liberty and happiness. How would they stand on this, would they deny the right to life if a treatment was available to save a life or the persuit of happiness if a treatment existed to help with a treatable condition?
I do understand that nothing is free.Paying for people to use the ER for a doctor and billion dollar bonuses as we do now is are not free either, maybe you are convinced it is, but it is there in the premuimns that businesses and individuals now pay.
I said that labor needed support in the private sector, I agree that the Public Unions do quite well for themselves. I said private for a reason.
Almost everyone agrees that healthcare reform is needed. But, government-run healthcare is a terrible option for the reasons stated.
It would be better if individuals had real choice, where they were able to “own” their insurance – purchasing insurance themselves (with vouchers, tax credits, or otherwise) and were able to choose from providers under a system of genuine interstate competition (unlike the current system, which hinders interstate competition) where the insured were able to choose the right coverage for them (not subject to costly state mandates that increase rates).
People have unrealistic expectations of insurance today (expectations far different from those 20-30 years ago). Insurance is intended to hedge against contingent losses, trading a small known loss (insurance premium) to prevent a large devastating loss. People use to buy “major medical” to prevent large devastating losses from major medical conditions. Today, people expect insurance to pay for everything, from routine office visits to relatively inexpensive drugs (recognizing that some patients require relatively expensive drugs or require many drugs that cumulatively). Economics predicts this unrealistic expectation in the situation where the consumer is insulated from the (external) price signal because the employer typically pays all or most of the price. The price externality always results in higher and higher costs as consumers demand ever more healthcare, since they don’t pay the price. Government-run healthcare has this same problem.
It would be better where consumers pay the price of their healthcare. In this situation, consumers internalize price into their expectations. They demand more and better options. And providers innovate to offer more and better choices. Even today, Walgreens has begun offering low cost choices for routine services as alternatives to doctor visits, urgent care, or the ER (for the uninsured). This illustrates not only how the market can innovate to provide lower cost choices, but also how the traditional model needs revisiting to examine the question of when an MD is necessary or what services can be provided by a RN, physician assistant, or otherwise. (In fact, my pediatrician-internist brother has shared many stories of the sketchy quality of doctors and the mechanical nature of much diagnosing, raising the question of whether low cost choices can be developed using artificial intelligence based on AMA-approved diagnostic knowledge bases.)
As an attorney who has studied labor law, I would suggest that the current system is labor-friendly and tilted against employers. Sanchez’ card check bill would give labor unions license to intimidate and coerce workers into compulsory unionism. Witness the internecine violence between the SEIU and their healthcare union rivals if you don’t believe that union organizers and their radical leaders aren’t willing to intimidate, coerce, and resort to violence. Workers deserve protection against this, and secret ballot elections help provide that.
I tend to think of todays union’s as people who don’t carry a M16, but a union card!.
And i dont mean, the unsuspecting member.
The SEIU has more power than the IRA ever had!. lots of money and lot of top political figures on the pay roll.
I could deal with a proposal that gets rid of the right that the government has given to the health insurance companies by exempting them from anti trust laws, then providing vouchers to lower income legal residents and citizens to purchase insurance and a co-op system to provide additional choises.
This is very troubling, very troubling indeed, Rouge Elephant. A Democrat in agreement with organized labor. File under Dog Licks Man story.
And you see a contradiction between opposing the bailout of Wall Street and wanting to use a public option to rein in greedy insurance profiteers to help improve the lives of one’s constituents. Well of course there is no contradiction at all, but when you throw around the bogeyword SOCIALISM so glibly and meaninglessly, you can create them!
This is very dull writing. It is so jackboot disciplined in its circumscription by rightwing catchphrases that it is difficult for you to squeeze any meaning through, true or false. But sleep easy – nothing approching “Government-Run Healthcare” is being proposed, anywhere on the Hill. Rouge Elephant will remain perfectly free to hand over his/her earnings to his favorite insurance profiteer until his/her dying day; and thanks to fighters like us, your premiums won’t be rising as relentlessly as they have been, and they’ll have a harder time denying Rouge Elephant healthcare when you really need it.
You’re welcome.