Then to wax back progressive again comes the big whopper: Health care. There’s a huge health insurance shaped wedge between what you think you make and what your employer thinks he’s paying you. To provide health insurance coverage to 40,000 people costs a lot more than $0. Ironically, if you were talking about paying your employees, less this wouldn’t necessarily be a problem as they’d be eligible for Medicaid. You’d be creating quintessential low-wage “bad jobs,” but you’d at least be creating a lot of them. But once you have the kind of workforce needs where you want to offer a decent wage, you’re either going to be restricting your pool to people who can get insurance through their spouse or else you have to tack a large extra employment cost onto the bill. What’s more, you’re bearing a weird kind of risk since if over time the cost of the insurance plan increases faster than your firm’s revenue and that causes you to make the plan less generous to your employees they’re going to view that as a mean cut in benefits that you initiated.

America got derailed from a long-term growth conversation by a financial crisis and a recession. Then we got derailed from a short-term jobs conversation by a ginned-up budget crisis. People in the know recognize that the health costs piece is critical to the budget issue, but the reality is that health care is critical to the long-term fate of the federal budget primarily because it’s critical to the long-term fate of the economy as a whole.

This post originally appeared on Think Progress on September 15, 2011. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Matthew Yglesias is a Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. He holds a BA in Philosophy from Harvard University. His first book, Heads in the Sand, was published in May 2008 by Wiley. Matt has previously worked as an Associate Editor at The Atlantic, a Staff Writer at The American Prospect, and an Associate Editor at Talking Points Memo. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, the Guardian, Slate, The Washington Monthly, and other publications. Matthew has appeared on Fox News and MSNBC, and been a guest on many radio shows.

So the quiet period between late June and the first Monday in October, when the annual case argument schedule begins, presents vacation opportunities for those who cover the Court as well.  But while little attention is paid to the Court during its annual “siesta,” appeals can and do get filed during this lull.

Amidst the hoopla over the debt-ceiling crisis, one of those appeals not surprisingly went almost unnoticed.  In fact, it rated no better than a minor story on page A-18 buried in a recent edition of The New York Times.  This appeal, though, will be front-page news if the justices choose to accept the case.  That’s because it marks the first legitimate challenge to the new health care law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

On July 27^th, a petition was filed challenging a recent Sixth Circuit decision which upheld the constitutionality of the law.  The 2-1 decision was notable because the Cincinnati-based appellate court tends to be conservative, and one of the judges in the majority was Jeffrey Sutton, a one-time law clerk with Justice Scalia.

While there have been a number of federal district court rulings on the health care law in the past year, the Sixth Circuit stands by itself as the lone appellate court to have addressed the issue.   The Supreme Court typically agrees to hear a case only after there has been a circuit split among the appellate courts.  But that does not mean the health care law’s supporters should take comfort that the justices will necessarily sidestep this appeal.

Cases such as Citizens United and the more recent Wal-Mart opinion are clear examples of the Court reaching out to decide hot-button disputes in the absence of a circuit split.  And Chief Justice Roberts’ famed line about “wanting to decide cases on the narrowest grounds possible,” has not always matched his record or that of his colleagues.  That’s a fact of which the appellants are well aware.

So there is reason to believe the Supreme Court could wade into the health-care controversy, and sooner rather than later.  In fact, if the justices decided to grant this challenge, a ruling could come down late next spring as the 2012 presidential campaign season approaches its apex.

If there is one thing I learned from covering the Court for more than a decade, it is that predicting outcomes there is sometimes only slightly easier than taking your chances in Las Vegas or Atlantic City.  Few people are privy to what the justices really feel, and journalists are hardly among them.

But if the justices upon their return to Washington take up the appeal of this Sixth Circuit ruling in the absence of a conflict, chances are they are not doing so to affirm the outcome.  No matter what the result, however, it will have obvious ramifications for what health plans employers offer to their employees going forward.

Supreme Court review of some sort on the health care law eventually seems inevitable.  But if it happens at this still relatively early juncture, another partisan battle is a near certainty.  And things at the nation’s highest court will be quiet no longer.

About the Author: David Weisenfeld served as U.S. Supreme Court correspondent for LAWCAST from 1998 through June 2011.  During that time, he covered every employment law case heard by the Court, and also wrote and co-anchored the company’s employment law newscasts.  In addition, his work has appeared in the American Bar Association’s Supreme Court Preview magazine.

After the rally (video below), about 15 Rite Aid workers and union reps attended the shareholder meeting to voice their concerns directly to Rite Aid’s Board of Directors and top executives. Inside the meeting, I presented a shareholder proposal opposing management’s policy of paying the tax liabilities on its golden parachute deals with senior executives.

Christina Frymier, a striking Rite Aid worker from Cleveland, was the first to address CEO John Standley and the board of directors during the question and answer period. “I’m on strike because Rite Aid is trying to make our healthcare so expensive that nobody will be able to afford it. Rite Aid does most of its business with customers who are very much like me.” She continued:

When I talk to customers and tell them what Rite Aid is doing, they are angry, upset. They take their prescriptions and their business to CVS and other pharmacies. If the people who shop at Rite Aid’s 4,700 stores learn that management is trying to deny health care to its employees, Rite Aid’s reputation will be harmed. Do you really want to allow your management to continue on a path that will hurt Rite Aid’s business nationwide?

Frymier was followed by UFCW Local 1776 member Donna Weber, a 16-year veteran at Rite Aid’s Tobyhanna, Pa., store. Weber, a pharmacy technician, described how the company has cut staffing to dangerously low levels.

Weber compared the executive’s huge salaries and benefits – including free use of the corporation’s jet for their personal use – to the reality she faces in the store. “Many days I’m working on the phone with insurance companies to resolve a customer’s prescription problem while other customers are waiting to be checked out,” Weber said. “These jobs take a lot of concentration.  It seems that if we can afford these high executive salaries and a free jet plane we should be able to adequately staff our stores.”

Referring to ongoing negotiations for a new contract, Weber said, “We shouldn’t have to choose between health care or food for our families.”

Weber was followed by Local 1776 President Wendell W. Young, IV, who described how 3,000 Local 1776 Rite Aid members in Pennsylvania have worked for nearly three years under the terms of an extended contract because the company is insisting that workers assume an impossibly high portion of the cost of their health care benefits.

“We are calling on Rite Aid to bargain in good faith to reach agreements on new contracts,” said Young, who called the company’s behavior, “wrong at a time when the loyal men and women of Rite Aid have worked so hard to help the company weather this economic down turn and contributed to its growth throughout the past four decades.”

“The solidarity rally and action at the shareholders meeting in Harrisburg sent a message to the Board of Directors and top managers that shifting the burden of healthcare benefits to Rite Aid workers—and taxpayers—won’t solve their financial problems or make the company profitable,” said UFCW Local 880’s director of collective bargaining Carl Ivka, who is leading the strike at seven Rite Aid stores in Ohio.

Rite Aid workers from the International Longshore & Warehouse Union, SEIU 1199, Teamsters and UFCW have attended three previous shareholder meetings.

Rite Aid workers’ union summit

The day before the annual meeting, Rite Aid union leaders met for a national summit to share information and develop common strategies for dealing with the company’s plan to shift health insurance costs to workers and taxpayers.

The meeting was attended by Rite Aid leaders from the 1199 SEIU, International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU), RWDSU, UFCW Local 21, UFCW Local 880, UFCW Local 1360, UFCW Local 1776, and the UFCW International. Also on hand were supporters from United Students Against Sweatshops, Jobs with Justice, Change to Win and the AFL-CIO’s Center for Strategic Research.

In conjunction with the summit meeting, two leading workers’ rights groups released an “Investor Alert” on the mismanagement and corporate greed that has led to Rite Aid’s poor performance. The report is available from Jobs with Justice at  and United Students Against Sweatshops.

Summit participants also celebrated the first contract victory by Rite Aid workers, who formed their union with ILWU Local 26 at the Lancaster, California Distribution Center more than five years ago. ILWU Organizing Director Peter Olney reported on the struggle by the workers to win their collective bargaining rights and a first contract.

“Winning our first union contract required a comprehensive campaign with customers and the community on the outside and strong leadership and rank and file action on the inside. Working together, we overcame vicious anti-union attacks and more than a year of surface bargaining by Rite Aid management.  It took an incredible amount of perseverance, determination and creativity to win, but thanks to the support from everyone in this room and many more locals that couldn’t be here, we did it.”

Pictures from the summit meeting and the march and rally at the shareholders meeting are viewable on Flickr here.

This article originally appeared on the Working In These Times blog on June 30, 2011. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Rand Wilson is communications coordinator at the AFL-CIO Organizing Dept.’s Center for Strategic Research. He has worked as a union organizer and labor communicator in the United States since the 1980s. For more information about Wilson, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rand_Wilson

]]> http://www.todaysworkplace.org/2011/07/05/rite-aid-workers-continue-calls-for-affordable-healthcare-at-shareholders-meeting/feed/ 0 http://www.todaysworkplace.org/2011/01/13/former-massachusetts-reform-head-warns-hhs-not-to-overreach-on-essential-benefits/ http://www.todaysworkplace.org/2011/01/13/former-massachusetts-reform-head-warns-hhs-not-to-overreach-on-essential-benefits/#comments Thu, 13 Jan 2011 21:11:56 +0000 Igor Volsky http://www.todaysworkplace.org/?p=4067 This morning, the Institute of Medicine began its second day of deliberations into defining what would constitute “essential health benefits” under the Affordable Care Act. Even though the law identifies general categories that insurers will have to cover beginning in 2014 — emergency services, mental health care, outpatient and inpatient care — these meetings are designed to help HHS reach more specificity on the issue. The agency is also required to ensure that the scope of essential health benefits “is equal to the scope of benefits provided under a typical employer plan.”

During the second session, John Kingsdale — the former director of the Massachusetts Connector Authority — predicted that defining “essential health benefits” will be “one of the more challenging parts in implementing the ACA” and warned the agency against “overreaching” in detailing which benefits insurers will have to provide:

KINGSDALE: The nation is highly divided by this and so whatever is put into the essential health benefits package that can be portrayed by those who tend to oppose ACA as unfairly burdening those employers or individuals, who want a different benefit package will be used as political fodder to tear down the ACA and I strongly believe that overreaching…could doom implementation. [...]

There is a tendency to think about benefits in the context of negotiation for something more someone else would pay for and I think it continually surprises people to understand, ‘oh there are real people who cannot afford what we consider to be an ideal benefit package and they actually have to pay for it in premiums. ….This was very much about giving people decent coverage as opposed to primarily a policy of it just being about raising the standards of coverage and it seems to me when you have to make close calls about benefits, it’s important to return to that principle. Secondly, obviously, most benefits cost dollars no matter what you will hear about how they will save money and that the ACA will live or die on affordability. And thirdly, that there is a fair degree of consensus about minimum benefit steps and so that you will find most states don’t even mention most of the things that are covered typically by commercial insurance and there are additionally very few benefits that significantly improve [inaudible] or save dollars. So, I think it’s not difficult to find that essential minimum benefits package and then, as you can tell from my other principles, I would advise you to be very conservative about adding on to it. [...]

My experience suggests revisiting and learning from cases and some flexibility and even phasing in would all be very helpful as you go down the path of defining a minimum benefit that will be extremely controversial.

Indeed, as CQ Healthbeat reported, it’s still unclear “if officials will seek a specific list of treatments or ask insurers to mirror benefits in particular plans, such as the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program.” Either way, they will have to balance Kingsdale’s suggestions with the concern that too loose of a definition would allow insurers to design plans differently — possibly even in such a way that would lead to adverse selection.

IOM will publish recommendations for HHS “by September, and HHS will issue its proposed rules by the end of the year, giving insurance companies time to adjust plans before the provisions take effect.”

This article was originally published on Wonk Room.

About The Author: Igor Volsky is Health Care Editor for ThinkProgress.org and The Progress Report at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. He also writes on LGBT Equality issues. Igor is co-author of Howard Dean’s Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform. Prior to joining the Center, Igor blogged at BodyPolitik.org and interned with ThinkProgress, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), and the Hudson River Valley Institute at Marist College. Igor grew up in Russia, Israel, and New Jersey. Igor has appeared on MSNBC, CNN, Fox Business, and CNBC television, and has been a guest on many radio shows.

The lie? That the government will be taking over health care.

I’ll leave it to Politifact to debate the “why.” I’m more interested in the “how” and what we can learn from this that will help us to survive today’s challenging workplace.

Repetition was probably the one factor that pushed this phrase to the top of the list. In 2010 alone, “government takeover” was mentioned 28 times in the Washington Post, 77 times in Politico and 79 times on CNN. Add to this countless times on a variety of congressional and activist web sites.

Beyond your beliefs about health care, and the politics surrounding, is one simple fact, views can be shaped by a message being said over, and over, and over again.

Which reminds me of a previous blog that I wrote about Google. Remember, Google is not an arbiter of what’s true or not true, it’s fancy algorithms only can tell you what’s popular.

If you’ve ever locked horns with a nemesis at work, you’ll learn this lesson painfully. When someone has a lot of anger and time, they can do a huge amount of mischief at work by simply repeating something over and over again.

Which is why when someone starts spreading a mistruth about you at work, you need to respond to it. Because what could seem outrageous to everyone today, can become a “health care takeover” juggernaut in just a matter of days.

Listen to the grapevine. And take out your pencil to try to erase the parts that aren’t true, while you still can.

I’d hope that most of you don’t take this as a strategy to get ahead, but rather as insight about the dynamics of how negative messages can resonate. And more importantly, how their damage can be limited.

About The Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. Check the revised edition of his Wall Street Journal best seller, “The Boss’s Survival Guide.” If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.

Foreclosures — Do you think that the cash support should go to the bankers or the people being foreclosed on? Ironically words like responsibility can be applied or not applied to both sides of this equation.

Sure we’re all mad at the banks. They took huge risks, kept their profits and stuck us with their losses. Which candidates are most inclined to hold the banks accountable? And which candidates are inclined to take contributions from said bankers? The rhetoric isn’t as important as the money flows, in my humble opinion.

Health Care — Health care is another popular political piñata today. Do you long for the old system of health care? Or do you think it makes sense to have someone looking over the insurance companies’ shoulders?

The wars — Is this a question of pride and winning or is it more of an issue of cutting our losses?

Unemployment assistance — 99 weeks does seem like a long time to get help for being unemployed. Too many too long. But if you know people who’ve been out of work that long, you know the struggle that they’re facing.

Political theater or political action — Which candidates are inclined to roll up their sleeves and work to get things done?

This shouldn’t be done from the hip. Definitely take out your voting pamphlets and  do some research on your options. Your steady hand is needed on the ship of state’s rudder.

About The Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. Check the revised edition of his Wall Street Journal best seller, “The Boss’s Survival Guide.” If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.

The insurance companies then filed suit claiming the state has no authority to block the premium increases and sought an injunction to prevent the state from regulating premiums until the suit comes to trial. The judge rejected the request.

In an interview with the Boston Globe, Gov. Deval Patrick (D) praised the court’s decision.

Unless insurers can give us a good reason, when everything else is flat, that they deserve 20 percent, 30 percent and in some cases 40 percent increases, they’re going to be denied.

The judge said the Massachusetts companies must exhaust all their administrative appeals within the Insurance Division before the suit over the state’s ability to regulate premium costs can go forward.

The case is drawing national attention because, in 2006, Massachusetts passed a health care reform law that has several similar provisions to the recently enacted national health care reform law, including regulating premium increases.

In February, when Anthem Blue Cross in California announced it was raising premiums by as much as 39 percent, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius said, “Too many Americans are at the whim of private, for-profit insurance companies.”

Anthem Blue Cross’ parent company, WellPoint, posted $4.9 billion in profits in 2009. Sebelius said health insurance companies like WellPoint “are raking in billions in profits each year, while policyholders struggle to make ends meet in this tough economy.” In a letter to Anthem President Leslie Margolin, she demanded the company provide justification for the increases.

The extraordinary increases are up to 15 times faster than inflation. Your company’s strong financial position makes these rate increases even more difficult to understand.

Following public outcry, the company agreed to postpone the rate hikes until May, pending a review by an outside actuary appointed by the state insurance commissioner.

*This article originally appeared in AFL-CIO on April 13, 2010. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Mike Hall is a former West Virginia newspaper reporter, staff writer for the United Mine Workers Journal and managing editor of the Seafarers Log. I came to the AFL- CIO in 1989 and have written for several federation publications, focusing on legislation and politics, especially grassroots mobilization and workplace safety. When my collar was still blue, I carried union cards from the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers, American Flint Glass Workers and Teamsters for jobs in a chemical plant, a mining equipment manufacturing plant and a warehouse. I’ve also worked as roadie for a small-time country-rock band, sold my blood plasma and played an occasional game of poker to help pay the rent. You may have seen me at one of several hundred Grateful Dead shows. I was the one with longhair and the tie-dye. Still have the shirts, lost the hair.

This year, over 4 million small businesses will get tax credits worth up to 35% of their health care costs. This year, seniors will get $250 towards closing their coverage donut hole. This year, young Americans will be able to stay on their parent’s insurance plan until they are 26. This year, lifetime caps on benefits will be a thing of the past. And this year, the people with pre-existing conditions who can’t get health care now at any price will be able to buy into high-risk pools until the exchanges are set up in 2014.

But we are not done. Right after the House passed the health care bill on Sunday, they passed a package of improvements that now head to the Senate for an up-or-down vote.

The fixes heading to the Senate are mostly focused on making health care affordable to middle class families.

First, the package vastly improves the excise tax on “Cadillac” insurance plans, raising the threshold at which a plan will be affected to $10,200 for individual plans and $27,500 for family coverage. It also delays the implementation of the tax until 2018. As a result, the burden on middle tax families will be dramatically reduced.

To make up for the loss in revenue, the fixes broaden the Medicare payroll tax on on rich investors, taxing net investment income for those who make more than $250,000 per year.

And second, the package increases the subsidies available in the exchanges for middle class families and lowers their cost sharing. With the package, a lower percentage of a family’s income will be spent on health care costs – both premiums and out of pocket.

And there are more provisions in the package that would help broad swaths of the American public:

• The package fully closes the donut hole for seniors over time
• It freezes Medicare Advantage overpayments to private insurers and requires private insurers to pay 85% of money in to benefits in Medicare Advantage, to match the levels for all insurance plans in the health care bill
• It strikes the deals Senators like Ben Nelson received and replaces them with increased Medicaid funding to all states
• And it funds student loans for millions of young Americans

The Senate, after a string of favorable parliamentary rulings, is expected to take up the improvements under budget reconciliation rules today, with the goal of a final vote at the end of this week before the Easter recess.

*This post originally appeared in Health Care For America Now on March 23, 2010. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Jason Rosenbaum is a writer and musician currently residing in Washington D.C. He is interested in the intersection of politics and culture, media consolidation issues, and making sense out of our foreign policy disasters. He currently works for Health Care for America Now and he is also the webmaster for The Seminal.

First, from Pennsylvania, the New York Times headlines “Big Insurance Rate Increase for Pennsylvania Poor”:

Facing a sharp rise in costs, Pennsylvania has almost doubled the monthly bill for a state health insurance program for poor people who do not qualify for Medicaid and are on a waiting list for a less costly option.

On March 1, the cost of the plan rose to about $600 a month, up from $313 a month, for the roughly 2,400 state residents on the waiting list.

…

Established in 2002, Pennsylvania’s state insurance program, called AdultBasic, covers adults ages 19 to 65 with incomes lower than twice the federal poverty level, or about $21,672 for a single person, at a cost to participants of about $36 per month. About 39,000 people are enrolled in AdultBasic.

About 390,000 other people are on a waiting list to join the AdultBasic program. While they wait, the state gives them the option to pay for the same insurance at a higher rate. It is the cost for members of the waiting list that rose on March 1 to about $600 a month.

Health reform solves this problem.

For families who make 133% of the Federal Poverty Level or less – about $24,000 per year – health reform would allow them to get on Medicaid. Those families who make more than that – up to 400% of the FPL or about $73,000 per year – will be able to purchase heavily subsidized insurance in the Exchanges.

For families making between 133% FPL and 200% FPL ($24,000 – $36,000 per year) – the people affected by Pennsylvania’s rate increase above – their average cost for insurance, both premiums and out of pocket, will be [pdf] around $63 per month for families at 133% up to $244 per month for families at 200%.

The next headline is from Kaiser Health News, “Drug Prices Rise For Seniors Who Reach Medicare Part D Coverage Gap”:

Seniors who hit the coverage gap in their Medicare prescription drug plans and must use their own money to buy drugs are facing price increases that are far outpacing inflation, a new study finds.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, prices paid by enrollees in standalone Part D plans who enter the coverage gap increased 5 percent or more since January 2009 for half of 10 brand-name drugs most commonly used by seniors. That’s almost twice the rate of inflation over the same period.

For example, the price of Actonel, a treatment for osteoporosis, increased 8 percent, from $91 per month in 2009 to $98 per month in 2010. Meanwhile, the prices for both Aricept, an Alzheimer’s medication, and Plavix, a drug used to prevent blood clots, both increased by 7 percent during the same period. Aricept’s prices rose from $184 to $198 while Plavix’s rose from $142 to $152. Lipitor, a cholesterol medication, was the only drug surveyed that decreased in price, from slightly more than $86 to just under $86 per month.

The rising prices are part of a longer is sufficient longer-term trend. Between January 2006 and January 2010, the analysis showed, prices of drugs bought by seniors who hit the coverage gap increased 20 to 25 percent for Lipitor, Plavix, Nexium, a drug for acid-reflux, and Lexapro, a medication for depression and anxiety; 39 percent for Actonel, and 41 percent for Aricept. Over the same period, inflation has increased 9.2 percent while prices for medical care have surged 16.1 percent.

Health reform solves this problem, too. Immediately after passage of the bill, seniors will get immediate relief that starts closing that coverage gap. The gap will be completely closed as health reform is implemented.

There are a few more noteworthy immediate affects of reform as well:

• Prohibit pre-existing condition exclusions for children in all new plans;
• Provide immediate access to insurance for uninsured Americans who are uninsured because of a pre-existing condition through a temporary high-risk pool; (this will help with the Pennsylvania situation as well)
• Prohibit dropping people from coverage when they get sick in all individual plans;
• Offer tax credits to small businesses to purchase coverage;
• Eliminate lifetime limits and restrictive annual limits on benefits in all plans;
• Require plans to cover an enrollee’s dependent children until age 26;
• Require new plans to cover preventive services and immunizations without cost-sharing;
• Ensure consumers have access to an effective internal and external appeals process to appeal new insurance plan decisions;
• Require premium rebates to enrollees from insurers with high administrative expenditures and require public disclosure of the percent of premiums applied to overhead costs.

Reform will also help people like 11-year-old Marcelas Owens, who’s mother died because she didn’t have insurance:

And Matt Masterson’s son, who’s pre-existing condition makes him virtually uninsurable, a near death sentence as soon as he’s kicked of his father’s insurance plan in a few years:

Finally, today, the House Energy and Commerce Committee came out with numbers on how reform will help people in every Congressional district.

The vote is coming in the House. It’s likely to take place this weekend. Without reform, none of these problems get solved, and the insurance companies will get to continue their business practices of denying care and carving out coverage while making record profits.

It’s time to for the House to decide, and you should pick up the phone and help them.

*This post originally appeared in Health Care For America Now on March 17, 2010. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Jason Rosenbaum is a writer and musician currently residing in Washington D.C. He is interested in the intersection of politics and culture, media consolidation issues, and making sense out of our foreign policy disasters. He currently works for Health Care for America Now and he is also the webmaster for The Seminal.

A survey from Economist/YouGov released this week shows 53 percent of respondents support changes proposed by the Obama administration. A second poll by Ipsos/McClutchey shows that 53 percent of Americans either support the current reform option or hope for an even stronger reform package. More than a third of those who oppose current reform proposals actually favor stronger reforms.

Meanwhile, a study by Health Care for America Now (HCAN) shows jaw-dropping insurance premium hikes—up 97 percent for families and 90 percent for individuals between 2000 and 2008. Premiums rose two times faster than medical costs and more than three times faster than wages. Companies like WellPoint are raising premiums by as much as 39 percent in California and by double digits in at least 11 states.

An analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that people who bought insurance on their own between 2004 and 2007 on average paid more of their health expenses themselves—52 percent—than insurance companies. Yet those who had employer-sponsored coverage only paid 30 percent out of pocket.

The industry front group, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), heard plenty this week as thousands gathered in Washington, D.C., outside AHIP’s meeting to stage a citizens’ arrest for its crime in blocking health care reform.

Says Kaiser Family Foundation President Drew Altman:

The recent premium increases in the individual market probably have done more to illustrate the cost of doing nothing in health reform in simple, graphic terms people can understand than anything so far in the health reform debate.

*This article originally appeared in AFL-CIO blog on March 11, 2010. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: James Parks had his first encounter with unions at Gannett’s newspaper in Cincinnati when his colleagues in the newsroom tried to organize a unit of The Newspaper Guild. He saw firsthand how companies pull out all the stops to prevent workers from forming a union. He is a journalist by trade, and worked for newspapers in five different states before joining the AFL-CIO staff in 1990. He has also been a seminary student, drug counselor, community organizer, event planner, adjunct college professor and county bureaucrat. His proudest career moment, though, was when he served, along with other union members and staff, as an official observer for South Africa’s first multiracial elections. Author photo by Joe Kekeris