BAC Executive Council Addresses Health Care Crisis

Members of the BAC Executive Council, representing every region, craft and constituency group, met in February to continue work on the Union’s strategic plan, the Millennium Morning Project. The Council also discussed the state of the Union, and began to address the unprecedented increase in the cost of health care and the implications for BAC members and their families.

The United States’ health care system is in crisis. Leading benefit consulting firms project that health care costs will continue to skyrocket in 2003. This year alone, health care costs are expected to increase by 15 percent, and prescription drug coverage is expected to rise at an even faster rate of 20 percent. As a result, a growing number of families are losing coverage, paying more for coverage, or settling for less than adequate coverage.

“It’s not just the poor that have no coverage, but working families have lost coverage, a substantial number in the middle class have no coverage, and retirees are losing coverage,” AFL-CIO Assistant to the President for Government Relations Gerald Shea told the Council. In addition, those who still have coverage are paying more as “premiums continue to outpace wage increases,” Shea added. In 2002, for example, the average wage increase for all workers was roughly 3.4 percent compared to the average increase in health care premiums of 12.7 percent.

There are two levels to this issue, President John J. Flynn told the Council. “The first is national. It’s clear that at the national level, changes need to be made to the entire health care system. We have every intention of working with the AFL-CIO toward that end. But, as we learned in the early 1990s, change is not around the corner.
It will take time to create the support needed for any meaningful change in the health care system to occur.”

“The second level is the immediate impact that skyrocketing health care costs are having on our members and funds,” Flynn added. “Our health and welfare funds are facing unprecedented challenges. Costs are rising at a faster rate than wages, and new reporting and record keeping requirements under HIPPA are more costly and difficult to implement than ever before. Across the country we’re seeing funds struggling to negotiate the increases they need to just maintain benefits — much less improve them. Clearly, something has to change in our approach as a union to providing members with health care.”

To address this issue, President Flynn announced the appointment of a Health Care Task Force to develop recommendations for helping Local funds and members cope with the current crisis.