Re: OK, Nathan
Nathan Newman wrote:
—– Original Message —– From: “Doug Henwood” dhenwood@panix.com
Nathan Newman wrote:
A failure to equate enthusiasm for “government-run” with social democratic aspirations makes little sense.
-Well who else is going to do it? The Ford Foundation?
Worker-controlled benefit funds is one approach.
As it happens, I was just reading the bits in Bob Fitch’s excellent new book, Solidarity for Sale, that reviews the history of unions & public health insurance. It’s hideous. Gompers opposed it - thought it would emasculate the worker. Sweeney voted against it within the AFL-CIO in the early 1990s. (Cue to John Lacny to fulminate about this.) And one of the reasons for this, Fitch argues, is union-controlled benefit funds, which have been sinkholes of corruption. (Sweeney’s vote, Fitch argues, was because the SEIU has so many workers in private-sector health care.) But aside from the corrupting influence of such funds, they would be fragmented and horribly inefficient, duplicating the preposterous administrative costs of the US system. So this is a very bad idea. And not likely to have much public support if it bears the union label.
Doug