Health Care Event in Edwardsville
Coverage of a health care event in the Edwardsville Intelligencer (Illinois) was brought to our attention by Dr. Pam Gronemeyer, an active Illinois Main Street Alliance member. Pam will be taking the small business case for health care reform to DC at the end of the month. She is also speaking at the National Organization of Women’s conference in Indianapolis.
Thanks Pam, and way to go!
Making a push for health care
Information presented at Goshen Market
By NORMA MENDOZA
njmendoza@aol.com
Published: Tuesday, June 9, 2009 10:56 AM CDT
Allied supporters of the call for health care reform staffed a table at the Goshen Market Saturday morning, providing informational materials about the need to fix the health care system in America.
Some of the most vocal support comes from members of the United Steel Workers who have been laid off from the Granite City Steel Works of U.S. Steel, some as long as six months.
Mike Fultz is a union member who was laid off by Stein Steel Mill Services, Inc., a company that works under contract at Granite City Steel. Fultz said all but two of the 60 workers who were working at the mill have been laid off.
He said he is one of 10 laid-off workers who opted to continue their own health insurance under COBRA, a plan that requires companies to continue coverage for laid-off employees who pay their own premiums for periods from 18-to-36 months.
He pays more than $300 a month for coverage for himself and his wife, subsidized by the government paying 65 percent of the premium under the stimulus package for unemployed workers.
He said now they have been notified that such coverage will end on July 1 because there are no longer enough employees in the pool for the insurance company to provide group coverage, therefore all of them, including the two who are still working, will lose their health insurance.
“If that happens, my wife and I will lose our house,” Fultz said. He said they won’t be able to afford it and pay the full cost of providing their own health insurance.
They are not alone; studies show that about 1.5 million families lose their homes to foreclosure every year due to unaffordable medical costs.
Jeff Rains, director of SOAR, the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees, said when National Steel went bankrupt in 2002, its retirees lost their health care insurance and went without coverage for three years until the Voluntary Employees Benefits Association was established in 1993 through negotiations between the USW and National Steel to help finance the cost of retiree health care coverage.
Benefits for retirees, called the “legacy,” have often been used as a bargaining chip in labor negotiations. Unions made concessions to help retain benefits for their retirees.
Rains said the high cost of providing insurance for employees is driving manufacturers out of the United States and into countries where it is not an issue.
Dr. Pam Gronemeyer, a pathologist, said she must pay $130,000 a year to provide health insurance coverage for her eight employees.
“These people are like family,” she said. “You work with them every day and you have to provide them with health insurance. The high cost of health insurance is killing small businesses. We have to have health care reform to save our small businesses.”
Gronemeyer said she is a member of Physicians for a National Health Program (PHNP), an organization that supports single-payer universal health insurance.
She invited people to come to the Edwardsville Public Library Tuesday evening to view a short film about health care reform.
“You have to become informed,” she said. “That’s the only way you will know what to support.”
She referred people to the Web site of the National Coalition on Health Care at www.nchc.org. The NC is a non-profit, non-partisan coalition of more than 70 organizations working for health care reform. Its honorary co-chairmen are former presidents George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter.
The allied group sponsoring the Goshen Market appearance includes: Health Care for All Illinois; Illinois Single-Payer Coalition; Campaign for Better Health Care; AARP; United Steel Workers (USW); Steelworkers Organization for Active Retirees (SOAR); Electricians Local 68; and United Congregations of Metro East (UCM).
For more information about health care reform, call Dr. Gronemeyer at 973-3584 or UCM at 451-1458.
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