Do Unions Still Shape the Healthcare Debate?

A survey released this week came to the unsurprising conclusion that people are having a hard time paying for healthcare. The totally nonrandom sample of more than 26,000 people who took the online survey skewed heavily toward the insured (77 percent), unionized (57 percent), college educated (80 percent), and white (86 percent). If anybody should be able to afford healthcare, it would be these folks, right? So it was interesting to see that a third of them said they'd skipped getting necessary medical care because it was too expensive, and half of those with health insurance said it doesn't cover what they need at a price they can afford.

The AFL-CIO, which sponsored the survey with an affiliated outreach group called Working America, has its eye on the upcoming election season, of course. "We're going to take this survey into the election and raise it with candidates at all levels," says Heather Booth, director of the healthcare reform campaign for the AFL-CIO. But with organized labor representing only about 15 percent of workers in the United States today, it's worth asking what role it plays in protecting healthcare benefits or setting the agenda for healthcare reform. Are labor unions still relevant?

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"What seems to be going on is that labor is accepting the concept of shared responsibility for healthcare going forward," says Len Nichols, director of the health policy program at the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank. Rather than simply protecting its own, organized labor has become increasingly receptive to the idea that it must work with business and government to find healthcare solutions, says Nichols.

Unions may have less clout at the bargaining table, but in the political arena organized labor is still a force to be reckoned with, say experts. Labor unions buy advertising and invest in public education campaigns that can influence public opinion. "They're able to marshal and focus the messages that the general public will see," says Nichols.