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Andrew Pantelis, a lieutenant with the Prince George’s County Fire and EMS Department in Landover, Md., says that taxing employer-provided health care benefits—a proposal before the so-called budget deficit “Super Committee”—would “hurt millions of working class Americans.”

Pantelis, president of Fire Fighters (IAFF) Local 1619, spoke at a Capitol Hill conference today where Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) and Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) released a letter to the Super Committee opposing elimination of the current tax exemption of the health care coverage employees receive at work. The letter was signed by 160 representatives of both parties.

Some 60 million Americans would face a bigger tax bill under the proposal. Says Pantelis:

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FDR’s premonitions about the ways Republicans would treat Social Security, saving homes, and work for the unemployed are stunning and scary. Take a look:

From The Ed Show … Recent polls show GOP candidates could suffer from unpopular policy decisions and proposals by Republicans in Congress and elsewhere.

When revenue problems forced the Central Community Schools in DeWitt, Iowa, to cut back on expenses, Amanda Greubel and her husband, Josh, who both work at the schools, kept their jobs but lost $10,000 a year in income. With a five-year-old and another child due in December, a mortgage and student loans to pay, their life has changed dramatically.

Greubel, director of the Family Resource Center for Central Community Schools, told a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing today what life is like in the day-to-day world of middle-class Americans struggling in this economy. The hearing was aptly titled, Stories from the Kitchen Table: How Middle Class Families Are Struggling to Make Ends Meet. Said Greubel:

Sometimes the grocery money runs out before payday, and then we have to be creative with what we have in the cupboards until we get paid again. My son ends up eating more cold cereal at dinnertime than I care to admit.

It means that most of our clothing now comes from Goodwill, garage sales, or clearance racks. This past spring our son was hospitalized for three days, resulting in $1,000 in out-of-pocket medical expenses. This month a problem with our roof required $1,500 in repairs. Even though we’d been setting aside a little money each month for medical expenses and home repairs, we weren’t prepared enough and have spent the last few months catching up.

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Budget-cutting can be a bloody business, depending upon where and how deeply one cuts. It can be a deadly business too. Not for the budget-cutters, though. That’s especially true for Medicaid. To understand that, you need look no further than Arizona. It was just earlier this year that Arizona was grabbed the spotlight as an example of just how deep GOP lawmakers were willing to cut. Rania Khalek recounts Arizona’s recent history in an Alternet post that reads like a budget cutting body count.

Meanwhile, Arizona was busy denying life-saving treatment to tens of thousands of low-income residents. After being the only state in the entire country to eliminate the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), effectively denying health care to 47,000 low-income children, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed a bill to end financing for certain organ transplants covered under Medicaid. The decision amounted to a death sentence for some low-income patients, who had little chance of survival without transplants and lacked the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to pay for them. Two patients taken off the organ transplant waiting list died as a result of the shameful measure, leading many to accuse Governor Brewer of implementing death panels through budget cuts.

Governor Jan Brewer — famous for declaring government a “necessary evil” and Arizona “headless body farm” due to illegal immigration — defended the cuts, claiming “We have no choice,” all while signing into law tax breaks that would cost the state $538 million in the next seven years, and ignoring other possible solutions. (more…)

By Roger Hickey
Co-Director, Campaign for America’s Future

Last week’s special election in New York’s 26th Congressional district was a political earthquake, demonstrating that the American majority, even in the most Republican of districts, will reject a candidate who embraces cuts to Medicare benefits or major changes to that most popular program. And, since almost every Republican in the House — and now the Senate — has voted for such drastic changes, Democrats across the country are happily learning how they can campaign to win back the House and keep the Senate.

But we can’t let Democrats undercut themselves again. Even as most of them practice their talking points about the Republican plan to dismantle Medicare, prominent beltway Democrats and Washington pundits are advising candidates that pressing their advantage on Medicare would not be the right thing to do. And others are urging Democrats to embrace policies — like cutting Social Security benefits — which would just as unpopular as dismantling Medicare and would confuse voters and undermine a winning message. (more…)

by David Moberg
Senior Editor, In These Times

The People’s Budget lays out a surprisingly popular vision of the future.

A national budget tells a lot more about a country and its politics than simply where the government’s money comes from and where it goes. As President Obama rightly stressed, it is also “about the kind of future we want …[and] the kind of country we believe in.”

But as happens so often in the United States, the political and media establishments distort the public debate by accepting the right-wing’s framing. In this case that means the issue is simply deficits and spending cuts, not national needs and adequate revenue. In this context, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the architect of the Republican budget plan, gets taken seriously when he proposes—with echoes of Vietnam—that we destroy Medicare in order to save it.

Consequently, the public is confused. More significantly, the corporate media give progressive alternatives short shrift, even though opinion polls show the public often supports such measures.

The United States could do much better with more active and—yes—even bigger government, partly because many of the things our society needs, the government can do more efficiently, fairly and effectively than private individuals and businesses in a market.

The corporate press, acting in its own self-interest, is loathe to report this fact. (more…)

By Mike Hall
AFL-CIO Senior Writer

Last year, when Congress passed the Affordable Care Act, it was a “historic milestone on our path toward a more just society,” says AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker, “But we also know that much work is left to be done.”

That work includes moving to a single-payer, universal health care model as called for by the AFL-CIO Convention in 2009 and this week  in the America Health Security Act, introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.).

Speaking at a Capitol Hill press conference, Holt Baker said:

We in the labor movement have long insisted that health care is a fundamental human right and an important measure of social justice. And for more than 100 years, we have fought for universal health care coverage based on a social insurance model, an approach that has proven to be cost-effective and efficient in countries across the globe and in this country to provide health security for seniors.

Jean Ross, R.N., and co-president of National Nurses United (NNU), says the bill will “create a more just health care system.”

Providing a single standard of high-quality care for all is a priority for registered nurses who have seen their abilities to act as patient advocates made more difficult as for-profit interests control more patient care decisions.

Sanders says the fight for universal health care “is the civil rights battle of our time.”

The legislation establishes a national health care program that requires each participating state to set up and administer comprehensive health care services as an entitlement for all through a progressively financed, single-payer system, as administered by the states. Benefits emphasize primary and preventive care, and free choice of providers. Private health insurance sold by for-profit companies continues in the form of supplemental coverage only. Says McDermott:

If an insurance company’s objective is to make a profit rather than deliver health care, a patient’s best interests may not always be in the forefront of their thinking. Decisions are made by accountants and actuaries, not necessarily on the basis of what’s best for the patient.

The program will be progressively financed, including a surcharge on high-income individuals and a tax on securities and other financial transactions.

“Let’s face it,” says Sanders in a guest column in the Guardian:

until we put patients over profits, our system will not work for ordinary Americans.

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Re-Posted from the AFL-CIO Now Blog

By Ethan Rome
Executive Director, Health Care for America Now!

If the Republicans have their way and privatize Medicare, it will put millions of seniors at the mercy of health insurance companies and force them to pay $39 trillion more for Medicare coverage than they would under existing law, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). That’s why this is a massive windfall for insurers. The GOP budget plan will also shift trillions of dollars in costs onto America’s seniors and families. When the program begins, new Medicare enrollees would have to pay at least $6,400 more each year out-of-pocket for private coverage equivalent to current Medicare benefits. And the average Medicare beneficiary’s contribution to the cost of Medicare benefits would skyrocket from 25 percent under the existing system to an astonishing 68 percent in 2030, according to CEPR and the Congressional Budget Office.

The Republican plan will enrich insurance companies at the expense of consumers and actually increase the overall net cost of health care by $34 trillion over the next 75 years, the planning period Medicare trustees are required to use. The increased costs are because of the private health insurance industry’s excessive profits, obscene CEO salaries and the costs of the bureaucracy it creates to deny care to consumers. These private plan administrative costs often eat up 20 or even 30 cents of every insurance premium dollar compared to Medicare’s roughly 3 cents. And in the past few weeks it’s become clear that the industry’s profits keep going up as consumers are being crushed by ever-rising co-payments and deductibles. (more…)

By Dean Baker
Co-Director, Center for Economic and Policy Research

Ever since House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan put out his proposal for voucherizing Medicare we have seen a steady drumbeat of stories telling us that this is a battle over the size and role of government. This is not true. It is a battle over money.

This point is important because there are very few people in this country who are interested in debates over philosophy. Insofar as they do give it any thought, most people will say that they prefer small government over big government. They want to see government play a less intrusive role in our lives.

There are probably less than a hundred people in the entire country who support “big government” as a matter of principle. Unfortunately, most of them write columns in major national papers.

This is bad news for progressives because insofar as the Ryan plan is seen as being about reducing the size of government, then it could be acceptable to a substantial portion of the electorate. On the other hand, if the public understands that the Ryan plan will transfer tens of trillions of dollars from the middle class to the insurance and health care industries, the plan will become radioactive to politicians seeking reelection. (more…)