Washington, DC - Andy Stern, President of SEIU, the largest union of health care workers in North America, delivered the following testimony today before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee regarding the state of America's health care system:

Thank you Mr. Chairman.

I am here today to be the voice of the 1.9 million members of SEIU--America's largest union of health care workers--and for all hard-working Americans.

I want to thank you for the opportunity to testify today.

Health care has been the most talked about, the most worried about, the most studied and the least acted on issue facing our country. As a result, Americans today don't have a problem--we have a crisis. And it's getting worse. The solution is no longer a matter of policy, but politics.

Chairman Kennedy, and many others here, remember the politics of 1994. We tried to fix health care and we got pretty close.

So as we again begin to find solutions there are going to inevitably be comparisons to 1994--especially by the nay-sayers. But the reality is this is a very different moment.

First, in 1994, there was a ripple of possibility. But today there is a tidal wave of demand.

Secondly, today polls indicate that Americans now are asking for fundamental, not incremental change as opposed to being scared by the thought.

Third, what is sadly different today is that due to our inaction in 1994, things are now a lot worse for average Americans.

We all recognize that today more people are uninsured, but also need to realize what we learned from a recent SEIU-Center for American Progress study: that less than a quarter-less than 1 in 4-middle class families can cope financially with a typical medical emergency.

What's also different is that it's not just the uninsured that are in trouble. Now, even insured Americans, who keep the system financially afloat, often can't pay their growing share of hospital bills, their co-pays and deductibles, or afford to fill their prescriptions.

Fourth, and most profoundly, this is not our father and grandfather's economy. It is no longer national, but international.

Today more people went to work in retail than manufacturing. Last year the world produced more transistors than grains of rice--and the transistors cost less.

Wal-Mart, not General Motors, is the biggest corporation in human history, with sales larger than the Gross Domestic Product of Venezuela, Singapore or Ireland. In 1994, a blackberry was nothing more than a piece of fruit.

These global economic changes are literally revolutionary, and they have an enormous impact on health care and America's competitiveness. By 2008, according to McKinsey and Company, the average Fortune 500 company will spend as much on health care as it will make in profit. That's crazy.

America cannot compete in the global economy when we are the only nation on earth that puts the price of health care on the cost of our products, while our competitor nations do not. So now health care is not just a moral problem, but an American economic and job creation problem as well.

We are in a race against time because our health care system is morphing from preventative to catastrophic care in front of our eyes.

Ever-increasing costs are leading more businesses to drop health coverage for their employees or set deductibles at unaffordable levels. Today's HSAs are mostly schemes to simply camouflage for shifting responsibility and costs to hard working Americans.

By acting with their feet, corporate America is revealing the major difference from 1994, and is accepting the new truth: the employer-based health system is dead. It is a relic of an industrial and national economy that has come and gone.

That's the discouraging part of what's different. Here's the encouraging part: the winds of change are blowing--and some are coming from unlikely directions.

The business community is waking up, and I believe preparing to speak out.

Last July, I sent a letter to every Fortune 500 CEO asking them to partner with us to help solve the crisis, and we've gotten some very hopeful responses.

The insurance industry, which created the ads with Harry and Louise--who helped defeat Bill and Hillary's dream of universal care--has changed its tune. Last November, America's Health Insurance Plans proposed its own nearly universal solution for health care. SEIU won't agree with all their ideas, but AHIP is seizing the future and knows something has to be done.

States are making their own solutions. Maine passed health care reform in 2003; Maryland Fair Share health coverage passed in 2005; Illinois covered all children; Vermont went nearly universal; and your own state, Mr. Chairman--with a Republican Governor--has recently legislated a bold universal plan.

And just this week in California, Governor Schwarzenegger announced his own sweeping universal health care reform plan, and another dozen Governors will soon announce substantial health care expansions.

The health care industry is stepping up too. SEIU hopes to announce new national partnerships for quality care with hospitals and nursing homes. Providers and workers alike want to give the best care possible, and we can't within this crumbling system.

Dozens of congressional candidates ran on health care in 2006. Leaders like Senator Wyden, Congressman Conyers, and Presidential candidate John Edwards are proposing universal, affordable health care plans. More presidential candidates, I believe, will join them.

Finally, and most importantly, there is not a dining room table of working Americans who would not agree: we need change--NOW.

Virtually none of this was the case in 1994.

But now, the forces stirring out in America are ready to seize the debate--to change, not just defend--the system. It's a drumbeat, it's growing, and I hope Washington can hear it.

What we need now is for Congress to raise their attention, raise their voices, and raise their expectations.

America needs leadership to bring health care to every man, woman, and child in the country. It is a moment. May we have the courage and the wisdom to seize it.

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