WMC Fact Check: Health Care
WMC Fact Check
Health Care: Industry Profits over Healthy Families
The self-described mission of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce is to create “meaningful, well paying jobs [to provide] economic security and dignity to Wisconsin citizens. A strong economy provides the tax base necessary to support government’s role in education, building infrastructure, protecting the environment, and caring for the needy.”
Does the lofty rhetoric meet the reality?
One Wisconsin Now’s WMC Watch has compiled a series of reports to fact check the many fictions advocated by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce. Consider the following when WMC uses its network of resources and subservient elected officials to advocate for more corporate tax breaks, less funds for education, inaction in the face of skyrocketing health care costs.
WMC Fact Check: Health Care
- Corporations Oppose Universal Health Care to Protect Obscene Profits. In 2004, the four biggest health insurers reported just around $100 billion in revenues, after pouring $300 million of that into lobbying in 2003. Opponents of universal health care claim a single-payer system would be too expensive, but the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation estimated such an endeavor, on a national scale, would cost about $69 billion a year – the cost of repealing the Bush tax cuts for those in the top 5 percent of income earners. An estimated 98,000 Wisconsin children were uninsured for all or part of 2006. [Source: Hostile Takeover, 2006; Citizens for Tax Justice, 7/05; Wisconsin Council on Children and Families; Kaiser Family Foundation]
- Medical Expenses Top Reason for Bankruptcy. At least half of all personal bankruptcies in the United States are the result of medical expenses. [Source: Wisconsin State Legislature]
- Employers, Employees Hurt By Skyrocketing Health Care Costs. The cost of employer provided health care went up by 9.3 percent in 2006, while employee premiums are rising faster than wages. Employer-provided benefits have suffered due to rising costs. [Source: Wisconsin State Legislature]
- Over Half a Million Wisconsinites Are Uninsured. More than 65 percent of the uninsured are employed in the workforce. [Source: Wisconsin State Legislature]
- Health Care Spending in Wisconsin Over $42 Billion. Over the next 10 years health care spending is projected to rise to $76.9 billion. [Source: Wisconsin State Legislature]
- Health Care Hikes Vary Across Wisconsin. There is a 26 percent cost differential between the highest and lowest cost areas of the state. [Source: Wisconsin Citizen Action, 12/4/07]
Examining WMC’s legislative positions, one might ask exactly what WMC’s definition of “government’s role” actually is. When it comes to government overseeing a fair redistribution of shared tax dollars, protecting water, air and open spaces and particularly, “caring for the needy,” the role of government, appears to be in WMC’s opinion corporate rights before individual liberties and profit before people.
Ensuring the interests of working families, seniors, children and people in every corner of Wisconsin come before the narrow special interests at Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce requires your action. You can make a difference and protect the priorities we share.
Visit the WMC Watch action center for more information about the steps you can take to counter the WMC agenda.
