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The simple fact is that the labor movement will have to break
with their reliance on the Democratic PartyInterview with Don Bechler -- single payer and labor activist.

Interviewed by Alan Benjamin
ILC International Newsletter

Don Bechler is chair of Single Payer Now, a California-based coalition fighting for single-payer health care. He is also an organizer with the Labor Campaign for Single-Payer Health Care.

Bechler's involvement with the universal health care movement began in the early 1990s while watching with horror the loss of health care benefits for the thousands of his coworkers who lost their jobs upon downsizing of the Westinghouse defense plant in Sunnyvale, Calif. He represented his fellow employees at Westinghouse who were members of International Association of Machinists (IAM) Local 565 as their vice president, chief shop steward, and as a member of the negotiating committee. (Westinghouse was later sold to Northrup Gruman)

In 1997, Bechler was hired as a mechanic with United Airlines. He represented International Association of Machinists Local 1781 as a shop steward and as a delegate to the San Francisco Labor Council. Following 9/11, he was one of the thousands of workers who lost their jobs in the airline industry, and he is currently without health insurance.

Bechler has worked with campaigns for universal health care in Maine, Massachusetts and Oregon and is co-author of several articles on the grassroots approach to achieving universal health care reform. He has also testified in Congress for HR 676.

* * *

Question: You will be one of the 18 U.S. delegates traveling to Algeria to attend the Open World Conference on November 27-29, 2010. Why is this important to you?

Don Bechler: I want to learn about what the privatizers of health care around the world are doing so that we in the United States can better understand their strategies, and so that we can better combat them, both here and abroad. It is important that we link up with our sisters and brothers internationally in the struggle for universal health care.

Question: The corporate media around the world are extolling the so-called virtues of the U.S. health care system. The dismantling of the single-payer systems in France and Canada, and of the National Health Service in Britain, for example, are all occurring in the name of following the U.S. model. ...

Don Bechler: This is precisely the reason it is important that someone who understands all aspects of the U.S. health care system should be in Algeria to explain how it really works. The fact is that the U.S. health care system, which relies on market mechanisms, does not work.

Question: Tell us about the Obama health care plan. It is being presented as a step forward. Is this the case?

Don Bechler. No, it is not. First of all, the program does not go into effect until 2014. Millions of people are dying today because of lack of health care. They will not be helped by the Obama plan.

Some people will benefit under the plan: 12 million low-income people will have access to some form of health care. This is what everyone is talking about. An additional 20 million people -- by law -- will have to buy private health care insurance. Another 20 million will remain uninsured. It is not a universal health care program. The big winner here is the private health care insurance industry. They will receive $500 billion from this plan.

The trade-offs in this plan are not acceptable -- just as the trade-off in the recent war appropriations bill in the Congress is unacceptable. The Congress just voted $33 billion in supplemental funding for the war in Iraq as part of a bill that includes an additional $16 billion in domestic spending. This, unfortunately, is how the political system works in the United States. It does far more harm than good.

Question: What about the effect of the Obama health care plan on the unions?

Don Bechler: For the first time ever, the higher-end health care plans, most of them union plans, will be taxed. Coverage will be more costly and worse. Many union plans will be dumped onto "health care exchanges." The idea is to allow consumers to compare the different insurance products on the markets. These exchanges will be failures and will only undermine the existing union plans.

What is more, health care will not be taken off the bargaining table.

Question: In your view, what needs to be done now to win single-payer health care?

Don Bechler: We need to build a more massive movement to demand single-payer. We need to build an independent movement. The corporate press has been pushing all the corporate plans. They will not help us put an end to the corporate rule of the private insurance companies.

And the labor movement has to take the lead in this fight, by co-authoring single-payer legislation in the Congress and saying that this is what we want -- nothing less! The AFL-CIO, pressed by our Labor Campaign for Single-Payer Health Care, voted to support single-payer. This was very significant. But no sooner had the labor movement adopted this resolution, they back-tracked under pressure from the Democrats.

The simple fact is that the labor movement will have to break with their reliance on the Democratic Party if it intends to address the needs of working people for health care justice. This reliance discourages labor from drawing a line in the sand that they will adhere to.

Eighty-six Democratic Party members of Congress have come out in support of single payer. But they all caved in under pressure from Obama and the Democratic National Committee and didn't even submit the single-payer bills they had co-authored for a vote in the Congress.

This only underscores the need for the labor and single-payer movements to build an independent movement that can win genuine universal health care.

Source: ILC International Newsletter