Unions vow to keep pressure on Congress for health reform

http://www.workdayminnesota.org/index.php?news_6_4379

By Mark Gruenberg
28 February 2010

WASHINGTON - AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka had a positive reaction to the White House summit on health care that President Barack Obama convened with bipartisan congressional leaders Thursday – more than he had for Obama’s health care blueprint released three days before.

But as far as Trumka was concerned, the GOP behaved at the summit just as it has through the whole health care debate: Saying “no” to everything that helps workers.

Meanwhile, other union leaders and members trained their sights on Congress.

Obama brought 37 congressional leaders together for a day-long televised public discussion of health care, after lawmakers showed no signs of final action on massive – but vastly different – health insurance revision bills Congress passed last year.

Obama used the Senate bill as a blueprint for his own plan, and which formed the basis of the discussion. His plan would impose a 40% excise tax on “high-cost” insurance – plans costing more than $27,500 yearly for a family – starting in 2018.

He also would fine those eligible companies that refused to offer workers health care $2,000 per worker yearly. One cost control would be a commission to order rollbacks of insurance company rate hikes.

FULL story at link.