Meeting Healthcare’s Challenge
Healthcare: a personal challenge
. ..continued from page 8
homes where we are seeing elder-abuse, and a
I ■ H here may be nearly as many
I
different ways that we are
concerned about health
security as there are numbers of us.
Several members of SEIU Local 503,
OPEU spoke with The Oregon Public
Employee about how it affects them.
They spoke as Union leaders,
spouses, parents and adult children.
The health care plan at CODA,
an alcohol and drug treatment pro
gram in Portland, "is very difficult to
afford," said CODA Local 963 bar
gaining team member LaDawn Mar
tin. The employer plan requires out-
of-paycheck premium charges for
* JL
“Politicians. Nearly all are saying
we have to do something (about
healthcare). That something
varies with the candidate. ”
-Rosalie Pedroza
Welfare Office Workers, Local 461
said, "Politicians. Nearly all are
saying we have to do something.
That something varies with the
candidate.
Marion County Employees
Local 294 President Evie Pech has
seen how the rising costs of
healthcare have even challenged the
most far-sighted efforts to control it.
As the local looks ahead to
bargaining and faced with premium
.increases that are following large
premium increases, local members
are asking themselves, "What can
we cut without making our health
plan into just a catastrophic plan?"
A plan which had previously no
out-of-paycheck premium charges,
now has them for
the so-called
"Cadillac" plan.
"I'm happy
with it," said
Beaverton Local
1 9 8 P re s id e n t T e rry
P riest, referring to
family coverage that M artin
cannot afford on her CODA
salary. Unlike state and local
government employers, many
private nonprofits don't have a
history of providing adequate, afford
able healthcare plans to their employ
ees if, indeed, they provide any at all;
including nonprofits, ironically, in the
healthcare field.
What's more, many workers,
including Martin, have an income
that just exceeds the limit to be eli
gible for the Oregon Health Plan.
"I'm increasingly distracted by
the costs of healthcare benefits going
up and up," said Rosalie Pedroza, the
secretary of Welfare Office Workers
Local 461. "We pay for people who
don't have healthcare and that raises
the cost for everyone,"1
Pedroza, who is the legal
guardian of one of her relatives, notes
that a prescription that not so long ‘
ago was $10, now has risen to $25.
"We've got to get a handle on this,"
she said,
Pedroza, who also is the state
wide chair of CAPE, SEIU Local 503,
OPEU's political action committee,
PACE 22 THE OREGON PUBLIC EMPLOYEE
This current health
plan. "We got a
good deal in the
last contract, but
we have less than a
year to go before we return to the
table and people are already getting
worried whether we can keep it."
Negotiation last time re
sulted in some cuts in benefits to
maintain the cost, but, Priest noted,
die ratification vote: had the highest
turnout ever and the highest favor
able vote.
"We're concerned about
what comes next," Priest said,
"because everyone sees what's
going on."
Because of a prescription that
costs $150 each 30 days, Western
Oregon University Local 82 Presi
dent Melody Williamson says she
sometimes asks herself, "'Shall I
take my pills today, or pay for
groceries?' I know I'm just one of
many who have to make that
choice; When I go to the doctor, just
walking through the door costs
$10." •
lack of accountability.
♦ Insurance company red tape; especially too
many complicated forms and excessive paper
work.
♦ High cost of prescription drugs; particularly
the increased demand of designer drugs caused
- • by expensive advertising campaigns.
But, despite our role.in this issue, and even the
leadership of SEIU working on our behalf nationally,
we are a small force weighed against a very large
problem. And, several of the forces arrayed against
us are very powerful.
The United States isalone among so-called "first
world" nations in that it does not provide healthcare
for all of its citizens. Attempts to change this
fundamental wrong have been met with vociferous
scare and lobbying campaigns funded by wealthy
groups and corporations with a strong incentive to
put their bottom line first. If Willie Sutton had been
a healthcare or, particularly, a drug company exec,
his storied phrase would still apply: marketing
drugs or health insurance is "where the money is."
Drug companies aré entitled to make a reason
able profit on their products. But drug companies
make profits that are four times as large as other
Fortune 500 companies. Their marketing budgets
have risen to 81% above their research and develop
ment budgets in the year 2000. Advertisements on
" television hawk prescription drugs. All of that can
make reasonable people wonder whether this is the
best way to prbvide healthcare for the widest
number of people.
It can make working people with employer-
provided health plans where the boss is demanding
more andmore out-of-pocket payments, wonder if
they are being treated fairly. It can make all of us
wonder if this is fight when a growing number of
Americans have no health coverage at all.
Drug companies, for example, spend three times
as much on costly marketing as they do on research
and development. They've also been instrumental at
keeping generic drugs off the market. Generic drugs
are of the same quality as the brand name products,
bufido not have the burden of carrying the market
ing costs the brand names do and, because of that,
any company can make them and competition
reduces their price.
The pfoblefn is something we're all aware of. In
few words, it's availability and cost. The SEIU
Health Security Campaign is the beginning of the
answer for everyone. •