Healthcare

Sick and tired

The United States spends more money than any other country on healthcare each year. Yet, we are the only wealthy country that does not provide universal healthcare. In fact, nearly 46 million Americans lack health coverage. An estimated 16 million more have health insurance, but their co-payments and deductibles are unaffordable compared to what they earn. That’s nearly a quarter of the population that doesn’t get healthcare in the richest country in the world.

When uninsured families are unable to get preventative and primary care, they end up at publicly funded clinics or hospital emergency rooms when their medical problems are often far more advanced and difficult to treat. In New York City alone, our Department of Health estimates that 4,000 deaths could be prevented per year if everyone had equal access to health care.

No excuses

This national crisis in healthcare of course affects poor and non-union working class people the most because they are the least likely to have jobs that provide adequate healthcare and they are unable to afford it otherwise. This crisis also affects people in the middle class: each year, more and more New Yorkers lose their healthcare or their share of the costs increase as companies that provide coverage lower their standards to compete with those that do not.

This shameful competition creates a downward spiral in the standards by which employers operate their businesses. Slowly, what were once established wage and benefit standards are eroded as irresponsible businesses increase their profits by cutting healthcare—not to mention jobs, wages, and other benefits—and other businesses follow suit in order to “keep up” with the competition.

Given the devastating failure of the federal government to act over the last 15 years to solve this crisis, a handful of local communities have been developing city and state solutions. NY Jobs with Justice led our community in winning one such solution last year—the NYC Health Care Security Campaign. Click here to find out more about the campaign and our continued healthcare work in 2006.