While this is commendable there are a few problems with the program: 1) it is geared toward those who currently have health care coverage, employer based, 2) it does nothing for those who have no health care coverage, 3) it is focused on reforming the unreformable, the existing private profit making system.

However, the comments following the AFL-CIO blog piece point out that there is already a solution that these groups should support rather than re-inventing the wheel: HR 676 which I have written about often.

Here is an excerpt from one comment: "The principles espoused by True Majority are admirable. It is obvious that people are listening, and then taking action in response to prompts by True Majority.

"That is why it is so vitally important for True Majority to support the real solution to our nation’s health care woes. The solution is HR 676, the United States National Health Insurance Act. True Majority’s “Health Care For America NOW!” campaign falls short of the mark.

"Many of us have been advocating for national, single-payer health care for years – long before True Majority was founded. We are volunteers with limited resources. We lack the funds and name recognition that True Majority enjoys.

"Please do not dilute our message by proposing something less than what is needed. A “public/private” health care system is what we’ve been struggling with for decades, and look where it has gotten us. The lamentable, immoral facts are well known. If profit-taking remains a component of this nation’s health care system, we’ll continue to hear horror stories about inaccessibility and unaffordability.

"Incremental band-aid fixes will guarantee continued suffering..."

Here is another: "Let’s not mince words.

"The program that Health Care for America Now! is unworkable - because it is unaffordable. It points our health care reform movement in the wrong direction.

"My central labor council is one of the 300 AFL-CIO central labor councils that have organized meetings to promote health care reform - but we insisted on doing it on the program that our clc, and our Vermont State Fed, democratically adopted.

"We are supporting HR 676, the United States National Health Insurance Act because we need a single pool ( a single-payer), and we need to get the insurance companies out of health care. We need health care not insurance!

"HR 676 has been endorsed by over 417 union organizations in 48 states including 107 Central Labor Councils and Area Labor Federations and 33 state AFL-CIO’s (KY, PA, CT, OH, DE, ND, WA, SC, WY, VT, FL, WI, WV, SD, NC, MO,MN, ME, AR, MD-DC, TX, IA, AZ, TN, OR, GA, OK, KS, CO, IN, AL, CA & AK).

"Health Care for America Now!’s approach was floated at the Jobs with Justice convention recently where it fell flat. (Underline added.) Labor’s activist base will not be mobilized for an unworkable “compromise” that seems to have been designed not to win real health care reform, but to keep the Democratic Party’s big corporate funders happy.

And another: "The only thing with substance and that I agree on is 'It is time the insurance industry started putting our health before its profits.'

"The only solution is to rid the insurance industry from the process of insuring ALL. HR 676 is the solution. Right now I keep hearing Obama will get us “universal” health care and McSame will tax the hell out of us.

"As I have mentioned many times, labor needs to listen to its members. We pay dues to the AFL CIO and SHOULD have a say in what type of health care the organization should be pushing for."

All of these comments are on target.  Why Health Care for America Now when HR 626 is the best solution, the right solution?  

As I wrote early in May: "Walter Reuther fought for single payer, universal health care and pensions 60 years ago.  Unfortunately, he was not heeded.  If he had been, the United States would have been the leader among those industrialized nations that have surpassed the US in single payer universal health care and public pensions instead of being so shamefully far behind, stubbornly stuck in the dark ages."

So why are the head honchos of labor not heeding their locals and these other 79 groups not supporting and promoting HR 676, the National Health Insurance Bill but backing a flawed health care program like Health Care for America Now?  Perhaps these groups actually prefer cutting off their noses to spite their faces by trying to kill support for HR 676. 

HR 676, or Medicare for All, is a progressive solution and would bring the US into the 21st century with all the other industrialized nations that have provided health care to all for decades. 

Health care should be a right not a profit making commodity opportunity for the super rich.