Vermont AFL-CIO Endorses Healthcare Is A Human Right Campaign

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.jwjblog.org/2009/10/vermont-afl-cio-endorses-healthcare-is-a-human-right-campaign-and-joins-national-in-supporting-single-payer/

By jwjnational, on October 20th, 2009

Cross-posted from the Vermont Workers’ Center blog.

FAIRLEE – This past weekend, the Vermont State Labor Council, AFL-CIO convention delegates representing 9,500-members unanimously voted to:

endorse H.100 and S.88 … (and to) play a leading role together with our allies in the Healthcare is a Human Right Campaign … in mobilizing broad public and political support for single-payer healthcare.

Building a powerful movement “to change what is politically possible” with real healthcare reform is the Vermont AFL-CIO’s #1 priority.

Convention delegates also put a parade of politicians, including four Democratic gubernatorial aspirants, on notice that they expected political leaders to work to pass single payer legislation in Vermont this year. Legislative leaders of the Working Vermonters Caucus also pledged to make passing H.100 and S.88 a priority.

In September in a unanimous vote, the national AFL-CIO endorsed the Single Payer Medicare for All approach to healthcare reform as the “most cost-effective and equitable way to provide quality healthcare for all.” United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard, who chaired the discussion said, “Whatever the outcome of the current debate over health care reform in the 111th Congress, the task of establishing health care as a human right, not a privilege, will still lay before us.”