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Testimony of UE District 2 President Peter Knowlton on Massachusetts Healthcare Trust

October 8, 2003
Joint Committee on Healthcare
Hearing on SB 686 - Massachusetts Healthcare Trust

My name is Peter Knowlton and I am President of District 2 of the United, Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE). On behalf of my union we urge this committee to support the Massachusetts Healthcare Trust and complete unrestricted access to quality healthcare regardless of economic status is a right of all residents of the Commonwealth and, in fact, of any human being. Whether you are working or unemployed, rich or poor, corporation or small business, healthy or infirmed these rights are as constant as our right to clean air and water, assembly, speech, or education. The Massachusetts Healthcare Trust is the only common sense solution that insures that our healthcare system will achieve the fairest amount of input with everyone paying their fair share.

We represent workers in manufacturing, service, and public sectors throughout MA and New England. We have for over 65 years. Our union has supported publically administered single payer health insurance and universal healthcare for every one of those years.

The system the Commonwealth has now provides access to and quality of healthcare based on privilege or circumstance. Under the commonwealth's present system of health care... to get it you need to be rich, lucky enough to get it through your union or your employer, or collecting unemployment under certain restrictions. If you are working and can't afford the health insurance premium payment pay cuts, or outrageous prescription co-pays you are out of luck - and access to decent healthcare.

In the 70's and 80's insurance premiums began to rise by large numbers. Then in the late 80's thru the 90's the numbers leveled off in many cases premiums actually declined with the advent of HMO's and the concept of "bulk purchasing" and restricted (managed) care. Now that that little experiment is over there is talk of "pay or play" and "employer mandates". My union unequivocably opposes "pay or play" or "employer mandate" schemes. These are just that "schemes" - designed to keep alive an industry whose very existence is wasteful and unnecessary - except in the eyes of corporate privateers and those who directly benefit from the existence of the industry. The rest of us, apparently can go pound sand.

Right now HMO monthly premium rates for the normal $10 office visit, 100% coverage, and drugs at $5 and $10 co-pays of BC/BS plans, Harvard Pilgrim, Tufts, United Health, Aetna are $900 and over for a family plan - or $5.19 an hour. Most of the workers we represent make around $15.50 an hour. When you include the federal medicare tax that's 35% of payroll for health insurance premiums. ( That doesn't even include the % of taxes that pay for Mass Health and that % of the workers comp rate that goes for medical costs for someone's injury or illness.)

It is absolutely the case that unless something is done to relieve the burden of an employer based health insurance system small business will take away health insurance benefits, which of course will cause workers to respond through strikes or other job actions or companies will increasingly go out of business altogether. The present employer based system we have now is anti-worker and it is anti-business. The business communities consistent opposition to single payer is slowly eroding as the economic survival of small and medium sized employers eclipse the ideological resistance to a publically administered health insurance system and, I submit to you, that employer opposition is, for the most part, ideological.

An employer based system places unnecessarily high financial burdens on businesses who provide coverage and pay the premiums while other employers provide no coverage and consequently put nothing into the healthcare system but whose employees, of course, use it. "Pay or play" or "employer mandates" are designed to take care of that inequity by forcing employers to either cover their employees or pay into a system provided by the state. In other words you are attempting to create universal coverage that is privately administered by an expensive unnecessary bureaucracy. Employer mandates will only make the situation worse - by forcing medium and small employers and their workers to pay into an inefficient and corrupt self-serving for profit system.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released a report on September 17 of this year from data compiled from their National Compensation Survey. They estimate that 81% of all New England employers require employee payments for premiums and that those on single plans take a pay cut of $789 and those on family plans take a pay cut of $2647 per year to help pay for those plans. These figures highlight, as well, the accepted practice of economic discrimination against workers with families. Despite the inherent need for greater take home pay workers with families shoulder an unjust burden and pay nearly four times what a single person pays. In addition good, quality, affordable dental coverage - not to mention vision - is virtually non-existant - if you have it at all. Union members, however, fare far better on all levels of medical and dental insurances as our collective power enforces a less harmful result on the pockets of our members. As a general rule union members pay œ , if not less, than what non-union workers pay for their health and dental insurance.

Many of the employers whose workers are UE members are small to medium sized manufaturers who are increasingly attempting to squeeze greater payments out of the employees, dismantle benefit coverages and restrict access. Most organized workers face the same things our members face. This clash between the workers holding on to a basic human right and the employers desire to cut costs will continue to escalate - until a long term public solution is found.

We decided, hundreds of years ago that it was the duty of every person to provide for the education of our children and ourselves.

The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts states:

No man, nor Corporation, or association of men, have any other title to obtain advantages, or particular and exclusive privileges, distinct from those of the Community, than what arises from the consideration of services rendered to the public; and this title being in nature neither hereditary, non transmissible to children, or descendants, or relations by blood, the idea of a man born a magistrate, lawgiver or judge, is absurd and unnatural.

Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity and happiness of the people; and not for the profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family or Class of men: Therefore the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity and happiness require.

That "common good, for the protection, safety, prosperity and happiness of people" is found in SB 686 - The Massachusetts Healthcare Trust.

Talk to our members from Rochester to Shelburn Falls. From Holyoke to Salem. From Taunton to Amherst. They are not afraid of a single payer system - because we have taken the time to educate ourselves about it. No system is perfect but it is only through educating ourselves that we dispel the myths and the fearmongering of the corporate privateers who want us to us to believe that a healthcare system the public controls is one step short of hell. We are not afraid of a publically administered health insurance system because the private one we have had for decades is literally driving us into the ground. We, most importantly, aren't afraid of it because aside from the multitude of examples throughout the world that prove the rule here, in our own land, we have publically administered health insurance that delivers quality care at an affordable price - Medicare and Masshealth.

If the creation of a single payer publically administered healthcare and insurance system is doable in any state it is doable here. Our population of 6,350,000 would make us the 97th largest nation. We have the numbers. We have the infrastructure. We have the knowledge. We have the technology. We have the skills. We have the capacity. We have the teaching facilities. We also have enough wealth and income to fairly fund a first class healthcare and insurance system. All we need is the will - to get it done.