IAFF Position on Health Care Reform

September 10, 2009 – On Wednesday, September 8, 2009, in a speech before both houses of Congress that was broadcast to the entire country, President Barack Obama spoke eloquently about the need for health care reform in the United States.

As health care insurance costs continue to rise at an incredible pace, and the burden of those rising costs continues to shift to our members’ wallets, the IAFF, as your union, believes in and is fighting for health care reforms on your behalf, including assuring that all of our retirees retain coverage until they are Medicare-eligible.

This union’s over-riding principle in fighting for reforms is simple and clear: Do no harm to our members. That means we’re working to protect the benefit plans our members have and reduce the costs both to our members and their employers.

Here is the message the IAFF continues to press hard as we lobby Congress concerning the debate over health care reform:

• The IAFF strongly opposes a tax on employee health insurance benefits AND we oppose an excise tax on insurance companies because those excise taxes are likely to be passed on to our members.

• The IAFF is against a single payer system and we are against a government-run health care system.

• The IAFF supports reform that will contain the cost of care that has spiraled out of control, including provisions that would allow more competition, helping lower prices.

• The IAFF strongly supports reforms that will fix the broken policies of many health insurance companies, including:
◊Forcing insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions.
◊Eliminating caps on benefits or coverage for certain treatments while a patient is receiving care.

• The IAFF supports reasonable limits on malpractice suits, or tort reform. That means we support allowing doctors to care for patients without the threat of unreasonable lawsuits, while at the same time giving victims the ability to seek reasonable compensation for gross negligence by a medical provider.

Your union will keep pressing our case in Congress and will be at the AFL-CIO Convention September 13-17 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, strongly conveying these positions during the debate on issues related to health care reform.