Retired Teachers Chapter News
Ready to help move mountains?
Sep 6, 2007 5:26 PM
It’s that time of year again. Remember Septembers past — the new school year, new faces in our classrooms, new plans, new expectations?
For some of us that memory is still very vivid and for others it’s a bit faded. But whether we’re new or seasoned retirees, this is a September when we need to make some plans for the coming year.
Through the efforts of our union, our members enjoy the best health and pension benefits, but outside attempts to erode those benefits — and those of all working Americans — continue to grow. We must be ready to continue to work together to protect the benefits the UFT has won for us through years of struggle.
We’ve made a beginning. We beat back attempts by the Bush administration to privatize Social Security. It was the concerted action of retirees like us and unions across the country that made that happen. But the president has not given up.
In April — while Congress was in recess — he appointed Andrew Biggs, a member of the Cato Institute who wrote extensively in favor of privatization of Social Security, to be deputy commissioner of the Social Security Administration. Congressional leaders had made it clear Biggs was unacceptable and would not be confirmed so Bush sidestepped the U.S. Congress and made his appointment while they were not in session.
We scored Congressional victories in the last election, but not enough of them. The tight margins we won in the Senate and House are not enough to get the legislation we need passed.
Democrats are trying hard to offset Republican end runs on Medicare, especially the disastrous Medicare Part D drug plan, with legislation designed to ensure that public health-care dollars once again go toward people’s health care and not into health industry and pharmaceutical CEOs’ wallets.
Despite facing multi-million-dollar lobbying campaigns, Senate filibusters and threats of a presidential veto, the Democrats keep trying. In January, the House passed legislation mandating that Medicare negotiate drug prices with the pharmaceutical industry. The Senate Finance Committee followed suit in April with a bill that would also force drug plan providers to reveal currently secret pricing data to government watchdogs.
In July, both Houses were scheduled to vote to cut federal subsidies to insurance companies offering “Medicare Advantage” plans, subsidies senior advocates describe as back-door attempts to privatize Medicare and which end up costing the government 12 to 19 percent more than traditional Medicare costs.
Between July and September the House was expected to vote on the “Pharmaceutical Market Access and Drug Safety Act,” a bill to legalize the importation of drugs with appropriate safeguards estimated to save American consumers $50 billion over the next decade. At least six measures supporting reimportation of drugs from Canada were introduced during the last Congress, but none prevailed. The numbers to achieve passage of the bills were just not there.
We know this struggle to restore fairness and decency and cost effectiveness to Medicare is an uphill fight. Not only are the vote margins a problem but drug companies and their trade groups spent $155 million lobbying on issues ranging from protecting drug patents to keeping lower-priced Canadian drugs from being imported.
There’s no mystery about why Americans pay the highest drug prices in the world. Add up the millions spent on advertising and lobbying and the bloated compensation figures for CEOs and you’ve got the answer. In the pharmaceutical industry in 2006, the head of Wyeth took home $32.8 million, Abbott Laboratories, $26.9 million; Pfizer, $19.4 million; and Baxter, $13.5 million. And it was also a good year for insurance CEOs: Prudential, $25.7 million; Cigna, $21 million; and Aetna, $19.8 million.
In his July 9 column in The New York Times, Paul Krugman notes, “For more than 60 years, the medical-industrial complex and its political allies have used scare tactics to prevent America from following its conscience and making access to health care a right for all its citizens.”
He cited the Michael Moore movie “Sicko” — a movie about the injustice of the American health-care system — that plays a recording Ronald Reagan once made for the American Medical Association in which he warned that a proposed health insurance program for the elderly — the program now known as Medicare — would lead to totalitarianism.
But it’s not just on the health-care front that we need reform. In June, Senate Republicans blocked a vote on a bill that would have made it easier for unions to organize workers. Although the Senate vote was 51-48, the bill failed to get the necessary 60 votes needed to cut off debate and allow a vote. The bill would have given workers the right to form a union as soon as a majority of workers signed cards saying they wanted a union and protected them from employer intimidation and firing.
At our June retiree luncheon, UFT President Randi Weingarten warned, “The Bush administration will do everything it can to diminish and weaken anyone who supports Democrats and unions. It’s happening all around the country.
“Private sector pensions are going or gone and their sights are set on us,” she added.
So what we must do to protect ourselves, as well as other retirees and working families, is elect a president and a bigger majority in both houses of Congress in 2008 who will champion our interests. To do that we need your help. With everyone on board we are a pretty formidable force. Remember, UFT retirees number 50,000 bright, talented and articulate seniors.
We can move mountains and we will be calling on you to help us move those mountains in the months ahead. We can’t wait until November 2008. We have to get busy now.
So, welcome back. I hope your summer has been wonderful and that you’re ready to help us fight back.
Stay in touch.
