Where Education Minnesota, NEA and AFT stand on health care reform

Education Minnesota supports:

Establishing a viable, comprehensive public plan option that will guarantee high-quality, affordable coverage that:

Makes health care accessible and affordable to every person, family, and business.
Ensures that individuals have a choice between selecting a public plan and keeping their private plan.

Ensuring that employer-provided health care benefits are not taxed.

Workers and their unions weigh the cost of health care benefits when negotiating for wages and benefits. Frequently, they forgo needed pay increases in exchange for maintaining affordable health care coverage. An additional tax will unfairly penalize workers who have employer-provided coverage.

National Education Association
The NEA has these positions:

It supports health reform to ensure that every person in America has quality, affordable health care coverage.
It oppose proposals being discussed in the Senate that would limit or cap the employee tax exclusion for health benefits in any way.
Health reform must guarantee a choice of plans and providers through a private health insurance plan (including one that employees may currently have through their employer) and a government-sponsored public health insurance option. A public health insurance plan option should not be delayed but established immediately and should be an integral part of any health care reform initiative.

For more information, visit the NEA Web site.

American Federation of Teachers
The AFT strongly supports a health care reform plan that will guarantee high-quality and affordable health care for all Americans. For details, visit the AFT Web site.

According to the AFT, effective reform would:

Establish a viable and comprehensive public plan option that will guarantee high-quality, affordable coverage that:

Makes health care accessible and affordable to every person, family and business.
Ensures that individuals have a choice between selecting a public plan or keeping their private plans.

According to a survey by the AFL-CIO, nearly 75 percent of voters want everyone to have the choice of a public health insurance plan.

Ensure that employer-provided health care benefits are not taxed.

Workers, and their unions, weigh the cost of health care benefits when negotiating for wages and benefits — frequently forgoing needed pay increases in exchange for maintaining affordable health care coverage. An additional tax will unfairly penalize workers who have employer-provided coverage.
Workers already are struggling to pay for their health care costs. Many working families simply cannot afford the additional expense of having their employer-provided coverage taxed.
Nearly 160 million Americans get their health benefits through their employers. Workers will see this tax as a real government threat to their benefits, and they will be right.

Require quality staffing standards that will improve patient safety, reduce costly medical errors and prevent health care workers from leaving the profession.

According to a 2008 Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality research paper, prevention of medical errors would reduce health care costs by as much as 30 percent in the inpatient setting.
In addition, a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association reports that nurses were responsible for intercepting 86 percent of all medication errors before they reached the patient.

Recognize that tackling health care reform is key to regaining and bolstering our economic strength.

Family budgets, American businesses, and federal and state governments are being squeezed by the current health care system. Rising costs and inefficiencies are straining family budgets, burdening businesses of all sizes and diverting funds that should be invested in efforts to help our economy recover and expand.
Reform can enhance choice and competition in health care, while also creating jobs, spurring innovation, and serving as an important and timely investment in our country.

August 19, 2009