----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com>
[Fairness dictates that I forward this weak response to Fitch's NYT op-ed. It has to concede that US unions have lagged badly on pushing for single-payer. Note that SEIU is missing from the list of good guys; as Fitch points out in his book, when Sweeney was running the union, it voted against campaigning for single-payer.]
As I detailed, SEIU janitors locals walked out of the 1994 California single payer campaign because the "good guys" in the single payer camp decided to screw over immigrant workers.
Honest single payer advocates to this day admit that this is a big drawback to single payer. See the California HealthCare Foundation site here: http://www.chcf.org/topics/healthinsurance/coverageexpansion/index.cfm?itemID=105322&model=single_payer
"By generally accepted standards of fairness, the single-payer approach rates high in terms of providing access to coverage. This approach achieves universal coverage without requiring anyone to pay premiums, with the important exception that it does not cover undocumented immigrants. "
Why the hell would SEIU or any other union where a reasonably large chunk of their membership is undocumented sign onto a program guaranteed to scew those members?
Is SEIU supposed to say to those members-- Sucks to be you, but we're trading off your health care plan for a government one that will exclude you and probably lead to the end of most available care at hospitals and clinics?
Until single payer advocates deal with the ten million undocumented folks whose lives will likely get worse under their proposal, they shouldn't paint the SEIUs of the world with such simple black-and-white strokes. SEIU along with other unions have been fighting hard to expand health care coverage in states across the country, from expanding childrens health coverage, expanding Medicaid, expanding employer coverage and so on.
Frankly, until the single payer folks make real universal coverage explicit in their plans, meaning covering the undocumented, put me in the opposition camp.
Nathan