A big part of the American Dream is based on the premise that if you work hard, you can provide for yourself and your family. But in today’s economy, good jobs are disappearing.
To survive, America’s workers are forced to take low-paying jobs that rarely offer health care or retirement security—and that’s not right, says Constance, a 59-year-old single woman from Illinois. If you work in the United States, you should be able to do more than just scrape by.
I left a job in a neighboring state two years ago to come back to help take care of my last immediate family member. I am single. I moved to Illinois, accepting a position with a small insurance company, who downsized, and within six months I was out of work. You can’t afford health insurance on unemployment wages.
I hired into a new position five months later, after a long search, and enrolled in their health insurance. I worked for them nine months, and again the company downsized and my job was eliminated. Again, I lost the health insurance, even though I was offered COBRA, [which I couldn’t afford because of] the exorbitant cost. You can’t pay $400 a month for health insurance when you are making $150 a week on unemployment.
After searching for employment, and finding nothing in this depressed economy here, I took a position with an insurance agency, which employs six people. [The owner] would not purchase a group plan and told us we were considered “self employed,” and we have no benefits.
Needless to say, at age 59, my alternative is eating or having health care. I have always worked all my life, paid my bills, voted in every election, and now find myself living beneath the poverty level.
Constance is one of the more than 26,000 people who took the AFL-CIO/Working America 2008 Health Care for America Survey. In the comprehensive survey, nearly 7,500 respondents took the time to write about their personal health care experiences. The overwhelming majority, 95 percent, say the health care system needs fundamental change or to be completely rebuilt.
Like Constance, 57 percent of the uninsured and 61 percent of people with uninsured children had to choose between paying for medical care or prescriptions and other essential needs such as food, rent or mortgage and utilities.
The AFL-CIO is mobilizing to make health care a major issue in the 2008 presidential and congressional campaigns and will present the results of this survey to candidates for public office at every level and increase its mobilization to help ensure that candidates who win in November go into office with a mandate for real health care reform.
The two Democratic candidates contending for the presidential nomination, Sens. Hillary Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.), have released comprehensive health plans that would help working families, unions and responsible employers providing health care coverage. The Republican candidate, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) wants to hand individuals the burden and the bill for health care.
For more on the AFL-CIO’s drive for health care reform, click here. Click here to become a health care activist.