AFL-CIO Convention Endorses Single-Payer Health Insurance

In a historic vote that adds the nation’s leading voice of American workers to a broad national campaign, the AFL-CIO voted unanimously at its national convention to endorse the enactment of single-payer, universal healthcare for all Americans.

The resolution was sponsored by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, and the Alameda County Central Labor Council.

In urging its support, CNA/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro, an AFL-CIO National Vice-President, noted the recent death of Crystal Lee Sutton, the real-life union organizer from the film Norma Rae who died the previous week after a long battle with cancer, exacerbated by her own three-year fight with her insurance company.

“No one should spend the last days of their life fighting with their insurance company,” said DeMoro. “We should not make choices of who gets healthcare based on their ethnicity, gender, or economic status. But I am addressing the labor movement, not Wall Street. And we all know what is the right thing—the moral thing—single-payer healthcare.”

It marks the first time in perhaps two decades that the AFL-CIO has been formally on record in support of single-payer, which would essentially expand and improve Medicare to cover all Americans. Labor unions around the country have been in the forefront of grassroots actions around the nation in support of single-payer and many labor bodies submitted resolutions to the national convention in support of an endorsement.

The resolution notes that “the experience of Medicare (and of nearly every other industrialized country) shows the most cost-effective and equitable way to provide quality healthcare is through a single-payer system. Our nation should provide a single high standard of comprehensive care for all.” It also sites specific single-payer bills, including HR 676, which has 86 cosponsors in Congress.

The vote came shortly after the convention was addressed by President Barack Obama, who repeated his call for comprehensive healthcare reform, and accompanies another AFL-CIO resolution supporting other Congressional efforts to pass comprehensive reform.

It also followed a reception hosted by CNA/NNOC and other unions featuring filmmaker Michael Moore, whose film SiCKO was an indictment of the healthcare industry. Moore was on hand to premiere his latest film, Capitalism: A Love Story to the AFL-CIO convention. He recalled that 65 years ago President Franklin Roosevelt proposed a second bill of rights which called for a right to universal medical care, a fight that continues. He noted that every day the healthcare industry spends over $1 million to block reform while thousands of Americans continue to lose coverage, and urged labor and community activists to keep up the fight.

Regardless of the outcome of the current healthcare legislative action, said United Steel Workers President Leo Gerard, “We’re going to continue the fight for single-payer. I’m not in favor of universal insurance, I’m in favor of universal healthcare. We are going to fight to make sure every single American gets high quality healthcare.”

“We know the patient care crisis, we see it every day,” said CNA/NNOC co-president Zenei Cortez. “We will not rest until we get rid of the private insurance companies that profit off of suffering.”

Greg Junemann, president of International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers and chair of the HR 676 Labor Caucus, said, “The labor movement needs to set our flag on the top of the mountain, and that we will not rest until we have single-payer healthcare for all.”

DeMoro welcomed the many international guests in the convention, and noted how most of them represent industrial nations where no one dies from lack of health coverage or goes bankrupt or loses homes due to un-payable medical bills.

“The reason? Because they have single-payer or other national healthcare systems, and because your labor movement led the fight for healthcare. Here insurance companies are at the apex of power, controlling our lives. It is not the public option we should be questioning, it is the private option and its horrendous power over our families,” DeMoro said.

“When we meet again in four years, perhaps if we adopt single-payer, we will be like all our international brothers and sisters in this room, and no longer be the richest nation in the world but just 37th in healthcare,” DeMoro said.