I know unions convince` employers to get good working conditions,

[Deja Q]

but why can't they go after the source of problems such as health care companies for the annual nightmare known as "premium rate hikes", each year being ~18% higher than the previous one? Employers have little control over health care companies.

There. I did it. A pithy post.


' By this I mean work for the workers who pay the unions.

Edited: Poor choice of wording.

[Norquist Nemesis]

1. The employers do the negotiating and contracting

Maybe it's becuase the only ones the unions (employees) can negotiate and contract with are the employers. :shrug:

[Fierce]

2. They don't badger.

They bargain. And they bargain their hikes, too.

[Deja Q]

4. Unions and employers have control over pay wages.

They seem to have little over health care costs.

I see your point and clarified my message.

How can unions (or anybody) convince the medical profession to stop riding high on the hog?

[Tyler Durden]

9. In very few cases do Doctors set fees anymore.

One of my Best Friends is my personal physician, a CONSERVATIVE Canadian import who is RABIDLY in favor of Universal Healthcare.

He's here because he's against being worked to death, not for the money. We've mined the Canadians so badly they're mining the South Africans, Indians, etcetera.

He uses "HMO" as a curse, as I do.

[TygrBright]

18. The only medical professionals I know who are "riding high on the hog"...

...are trendy cosmetic surgeons, penile-implant placement specialists, shrinks who cater exclusively to the worried (and well-heeled) well, and the medical professionals who have sold their souls to Big Pharma, the Insurance Industry, the MedTech Industry and Managed Care as "consultants" and shills.

Every other doc, nurse, tech, and aide I know is struggling like hell to get any health care delivered at all and collect any income at all from it, wading through a sucking, stinking swamp of "utilzation review" procedures, regulations, paperwork requirements, pronouncements of doom from their malpractice insurance providers, etc.

It ain't the medical professionals who are riding high on the hog. It's the CEOs and the big fund managers and the board members and the highly-paid consultants of those industries who need to be sent to the re-education camps where they can treat their own illnesses, wounds, etc. with a bottle of aspirin and a rusty needle.

enragedly,
Bright

[Vexatious Ape]

3. Good question.

A pithy reply.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

5. Ahhhhhhh!

I love your avatar, I think that is a funny show.
Um, not sure I'd use the word 'badger'. As a person who recently sat in on contract negotiations I'd rather say we work hard to get the best deal we can for the union members.
As for the insurnace industry, you are right, they seem to be able to raise rates and nothing can be done. It would be great for the unions and businesses to work together to get costs lowered. Oh wiat, what am I saying? That will never happen :)

[Vexatious Ape]

7. Maybe they could work together to "badger" Washington

about a National Health Care Plan. Like the rest of the industrialized world has. I know GM, Ford would love it.

[philosophie_en_rose]

6. Employers should provide free health care.

and negotiate for better rates.

Unions should pressure employers to do so, but they aren't usually the ones managing health plans. They can't negotiate contracts to which they aren't a party.

[yurbud]

8. you would need politicians who put the needs of people ahead of insurance companies

there is a limit to what unions can do there. If you get yours to do it, that's great.

[Greyhound]

10. If employers (and probably unions too) would get over the old world

adversarial script and work together, they might come to the conclusion that neither of them need insurance companies at all and have the resources to create their own risk pools and just cut the thieves out of the deal entirely.

Gates Rubber Co. did just this way back in the 40's in order to keep unions out, over just this issue. They built a state-of-the-art hospital and provided total health care for all their employees and their families, and paid their workers as much as the unions could get for them in the old system.

Result; no union, happy & productive workers, a profitable and expanding business.

The situation is different today, but the solution is still viable.

[Shakespeare]

11. Because the unions are completely excluded from that process.

What you are describing is negotiated strictly between the employer and the insurance company. Employers have (lazily) tried to pass on the increases to employees, and the employers/managers are the ones who should be howling bloody murder at the insurance companies.

This situation is one where the unions have neither the power nor the access--it's up to the employers, and until they demand a change, a change won't happen.

[mondo joe]

12. It's not as if the employers LIKE the increasing cost of insurance.

I mean maybe I'm being naive about it - but I can't think of any advantage to the employer, though I can think of several disadvantages.

[Shakespeare]

14. I didn't suggest that they did.

But as long as they're able to pass along the increases to the employees, they have no motivation for hard-nosed negotiations with insurance providers.

[mondo joe]

16. Hm, I think they already have a motivation for hard nosed negotiation.

It's not in their interest for the costs to increase the way they are - it makes them less competetive and less profitable.

Negotiation is only negotiation - it's not power to get anything you want.

[Shakespeare]

19. No, because those increases are happening across the board.

Almost ALL employers are passing on the higher costs--therefore, competition isn't an issue. There will be a tipping point--and I think we're very, very close to it--where employers can only pass along so much of an increase before employees can't or won't take on any more costs, but we apparently haven't reached it yet.

There was an excellent article six months or so ago in (I think) Harpers, that talked about why the left needs to woo WalMart as its partner in achieving universal healthcare. As the country's largest employers, WalMart is one of, if not the ONLY, company that actually has the power to demand a sea change in healthcare costs (because they're beginning to eat into WalMart's profits, even though WalMart's benefits are pathetically crappy).

We're reaching a point where we'll have no choice about making universal healthcare (or at least radical reforms to the present system) a priority issue on our political agenda, because the economics of the problem are going to dictate that it get the attention, period.

But back to the OP, unions are not part of the process that touches on costs--that's something the employer and the employer alone is responsible for negotiating.

[mondo joe]

20. But the unions negotiate what will be passed on to the employee.

So if all you need is hard nosed negotiating, then the unions should be able to negotiate that the employers pass on none of the cost.

The point is that negotiation doesn't get you just what you want - and to suggest that all the employer has to do is negotiate harder strikes me as naive.

Even as costs are passed down across the board, it still cuts into profitability and competitiveness for employers. Particularly smaller employers, who are still unable to negotiate a better deal.

[Shakespeare]

21. But those negotiations are going from prices already set between insurers and employers.

You know, I'm not exactly sure what or why you're arguing with me--I never suggested that negotiations were the only way to get prices down. In fact, that's only a short-term semi-solution, at best.

And I'm not naive, which is why I brought up the WalMart argument. Negotiating better rates will only slightly, if at all, mitigate the current cost crisis. It's going to take an 800 pound gorilla (e.g., WalMart) screaming for reform before anything's going to happen.

Of COURSE those costs cut into profitability for the employer (again, see the WalMart discussion). What I'm saying--and this is unequivocably true--is that employers have been able to mitigate THEIR pain to a degre up to now by passing most of those increases along to the employees. I'll reiterate: those cost increases are just in the last few years becoming too high to simply pass on to the employee. That is why we are--at last--at a tipping point in the healthcare crisis. How we deal with it the huge question mark.

[sandnsea]

13. Healthcare workers are union too

I imagine it would open up a whole can of worms if unions started attacking their own. Don't forget, healthcare is the ONLY industry that has truly added jobs in the last 5 years. The last thing unions want to do is piss off a growing dues-paying labor membership.

[Shakespeare]

15. You're confusing healthcare workers with benefits providers.

Those are two completely different groups.

[Kansas Wyatt]

17. The IBEW is implementing it's own national health care coverage.

It will take time to get all of it's locals merged into it, because each local has to change their bargaining agreement. The IBEW is also offering coverage to the contractors (employers and their families) to increase the size of enrollment. The main purpose is to start dictating back what a "fair" price is, and the IBEW has given up on the government ever doing anything about the health care problem.