WHEREAS:

            AFSCME has been a long-standing supporter of a single-payer health care system, with the goal of assuring comprehensive, high quality, affordable health care for AFSCME members and all Americans, regardless of age or ability to pay; and

WHEREAS:

            In 2012, private sector workers struggle every day to preserve affordable health care, while AFSCME members and other public workers see their health benefits eroding and their costs increasing at the hands of politicians too timid or unwilling to confront Wall Street greed; and

WHEREAS:

            Medicare and Medicaid are the target of anti-worker, right-wing forces whose goal is to destroy the programs rather than to strengthen them through their expansion; and

WHEREAS:

            The Affordable Care Act (ACA), while it paved a path to expand health care coverage and improve care, is unpopular because of individual mandates and reliance on the same wasteful, unprincipled, profit-driven insurance companies that have forced inflation in medical costs; and

WHEREAS:

            The 2009 AFL-CIO Convention-reflecting the will of the nation’s labor movement-passed a resolution supporting the social insurance model of health care reform, such as “Medicare for All,” progressively financed and providing a single high standard of care for all; and

WHEREAS:

            Signaling the broader support needed in the war of ideas on health care, in poll after poll, a majority of Americans have expressed support for single-payer health care despite a media black out on the topic, with only a third favoring the individual mandate, while 70 percent favor expanding the existing Medicaid program to cover more low-income, uninsured adults; and

WHEREAS:

            It is abundantly clear that America’s broken health care system can’t be fixed without such a fundamental and comprehensive change, building on the achievements of the ACA and most importantly on the publicly popular, cherished Medicare and Medicaid programs; and

WHEREAS:

            Medicare for All, or its comprehensive equivalent, is plainly the only rational, viable solution to the national crisis in access, cost and quality of health care, but faces ruthless, deeply-financed resistance and attacks from unscrupulous corporations, the political right wing, and the immoral, greed-driven insurance industry.

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED:

            AFSCME hereby strongly reaffirms its support for a nation-wide single-payer health care plan and for expanding Medicare to cover more age groups until everyone in the nation is covered; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED:

            Whether or not the Supreme Court overturns ACA in total or rejects the individual mandate, AFSCME is poised to join with allies in blazing a path toward a workable single-payer health care system at the national level, while evaluating and coordinating the fight to institute single-payer reforms in various states as intermediate steps; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED:

            Essential to that fight, AFSCME will work to educate members about the health care crisis, mobilizing them to take action to elect candidates who share our health care goals and vision; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED:

            AFSCME will continue grassroots organizing and building formidable coalitions against the currently mis^­named “entitlement reform,” a thinly veiled but heavily funded and lobbied attack against Social Security and Medicare; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED:

            AFSCME will urge Congress and the president to support legislation which embodies these principles as well as adequately fund the public health delivery system; and

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED:

            AFSCME will take the lead in building a powerful movement to confront corporate opposition to real health care justice, will use every available means to do so, and not cease its efforts until this fight is won.