Think Again •
CLUW reminds women to
screen for cervical cancer
By Tim Nesbitt
What my daughter and grandson
can tell us about health care reform
T
he experience of my daughter
and grandson offers a telling ex-
ample of what is right and what is
wrong with our health care system in
this country — and a reminder of
how careful we should be when it
comes to overhauling a public-private
system that is critical to the financial
well-being of working families.
Three years ago, my grandson,
Antonio, was born with a severe case
of cerebral palsy.
Antonio is a delightful boy with a
beautiful smile, but he may never be
able to walk or talk or care for him-
self. He has had numerous surgeries
and battles frequent seizures. And my
daughter has had to scale back her
college studies as she cares for her
son and navigates the health care sys-
tem.
Still, we were lucky to have health
insurance for both my daughter and
my grandson at the time of his birth
and in the months that followed,
when his medical bills approached
$300,000. That insurance was pro-
vided by my former employer until
my daughter turned 21 and could no
longer maintain her status as a full-
time student. Now we gladly pay
$900 a month to maintain coverage
for her and Antonio. Otherwise, An-
tonio’s medical bills would have
wiped out my daughter’s college sav-
ings and a good portion of her par-
ents’ assets as well.
When it comes to health care, my
family has a lot to be thankful for.
Thanks to a generous employer-paid
health plan, Antonio’s post-natal care
was covered in full.
Thanks to a government mandate
called COBRA, my daughter could
continue that coverage on her own
when she lost eligibility for my em-
ployer’s insurance. And, thanks to
family savings from living-wage
jobs, we can probably help my
daughter pay her health insurance
premiums until she or her future hus-
band gets a job with dependent health
care benefits.
But, if my daughter didn’t have
the help that came from her family’s
good jobs with good benefits, she’d
be in the same boat as tens of thou-
sands of other parents of children
with disabilities and disabled young
adults in this country. I attended a
workshop on disability benefits with
several of these parents and young
adults last year. Many are eager to
work as best they can, but they will
have to stay relatively poor to qualify
for health insurance paid by our gov-
ernment.
In order for Antonio to qualify for
Supplemental Security Income (SSI)
and the Oregon Health Plan, my
daughter can have no more than
$2,000 in assets beyond a home, fur-
nishings and a car. Antonio can’t
qualify for Social Security disability
benefits because neither he nor my
daughter has prior employment cov-
ered by Social Security.
This is what has happened to our
government’s health and welfare sys-
tems. Unlike the social insurance pro-
grams offered in other wealthy na-
tions, many social programs in the
U.S. serve only the poor. Middle-
class workers pay the bulk of the
taxes that support these programs,
such as SSI, but then they have to
spend down their assets in order to
collect those benefits when they need
them.
It is worth keeping these realities
in mind as we join the debate about
health care reform in this country.
Former Governor John Kitzhaber
wants to establish universal health
care by ending tax subsidies for em-
ployers who provide health insurance
for their workers and reducing
Medicare benefits for higher-income
seniors. In effect, he’d raise taxes on
employers who provide health insur-
ance and spend less on health care for
older people in order to give govern-
ment the resources it needs to extend
coverage to the uninsured.
But the employers who would pay
those higher taxes provide health in-
surance to 60 percent of Americans.
That’s what paid the bills for my
grandson’s post-natal care. And, if
we shift more responsibility to gov-
ernment for providing health care,
I’m concerned that lawmakers will
limit benefits to those who are poor
or nearly poor — a group that I hope
will never include my daughter.
To his credit, Kitzhaber’s plan
would cover the uninsured. But many
of the uninsured are working people
whose employers shirk their respon-
sibility for providing health insur-
ance. I’d rather force those irrespon-
sible employers to provide health in-
surance for their workers before we
ask good employers to pay more for
their workers’ health care or ask sen-
iors to forgo some of their promised
Medicare benefits.
Senator John Kerry offered differ-
ent ideas about health care reform in
2004. He wanted the government to
guarantee health care for all children
and help good employers who pro-
vide health insurance by having the
government cover the bulk of their
catastrophic costs. His approach
would have reduced employer-paid
health insurance costs that are largely
circumstantial or hard to control, e.g.
the costs attributed to the number of
kids enrolled in a given plan (by the
way, union plans cover far more chil-
dren than non-union plans) and the
incidence of catastrophic events (like
my grandson’s post-natal care).
Kerry’s ideas would be a lot more
helpful to my daughter and grandson
and to most middle-class families,
because they would bolster the health
benefits paid by employers.
Good health insurance is a bul-
wark of the middle class, as impor-
tant as a living-wage job, home own-
ership and a good retirement plan. If
we start to remove supports for our
employer-financed system of health
insurance, we will see more employ-
ers abandon their responsibility for
their workers’ health care and more
middle-class families tumble into
poverty. Then the taxes we pay on our
paychecks will be stretched even
thinner to help the growing ranks of
the poor without health insurance.
Don’t get me wrong. We need
government to solve our health care
crisis. Our union movement can’t do
it just by organizing more workers
and bargaining better contracts. But
we have to make sure that we de-
mand solutions from government that
encourage employers to continue
their financial support for their work-
ers’ health care and provide afford-
able benefits for all working families,
all income groups and all genera-
tions, from grandparents to grand-
children.
Tim Nesbitt is a former president of
the Oregon AFL-CIO.
WASHINGTON. D.C. — Re-
minding union women the over-
whelming majority of health plans
now cover the procedure, the Coali-
tion of Labor Union Women is urging
union women to make appointments
in January for cervical cancer screen-
ing. The month is Cervical Cancer
Screening Month.
“Cervical cancer is the only cancer
for which we know the cause. Virtu-
ally all cervical cancers — 99 percent
— are caused by the human papillo-
mavirus (HPV), which can be de-
tected through regular screenings be-
fore it becomes cancer,” CLUW
campaign coordinator Carolyn Jacob-
son said.
CLUW notes that more than 86
percent of female unionists — three
times as many as a decade ago —
have health insurance and most health
plans today cover the Pap and HPV
tests for women over 30. “It’s up to
each of us to make certain that union
women know how to prevent getting
cervical cancer. The most important
risk factor for cervical cancer is the
failure to be screened regularly,”
CLUW added.
Unionists can also check whether
their health plans cover the HPV and
Pap smears, and if not, why not. That
information is available from the HPV
Patient Help Hotline toll-free at 1-
866-895-1HPV (1-866-895-1478).
If your health plan does not cover
the HPV test or only covers it as a “di-
agnostic” test, then it’s time to lobby
your local. CLUW says. It says fe-
male unionists should lobby “the
union official you regularly deal with”
on health issues “and find out what
he/she recommends as the next step.”
Unionists can arrange for materials
for a presentation on cervical cancer,
Q
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by downloading data from
www.cluw.org, by calling CLUW at
(202) 223-8360, ext. 4.
Local 11 member
seeks public office
Sherry Parker, a member of Office
and Professional Employees Local
11, will run as a Democrat for the
office of Clark County Clerk in
Vancouver, Wash., this November.
Parker has worked as a courtroom
assistant in the Clerk’s office since
1998. Prior to that she was a legal
secretary/accountant for the Superior
Court in the Juvenile Department.
The Clerk’s office has an annual
budget of approximately $1.5 million
and a staff of 40. “I have experience
managing people, time and
resources,” Parker said. “I know the
challenges our office faces due to
tight budgets and high caseloads and
I know how the county budget
process works.” Parker is married to
Philip A. Parker, a member of IBEW
Local 48 and president of the Labor
Roundtable of Southwest Wash-
ington. Two sons, Jeffrey and David,
also are members of Local 48.
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