An Unlikely Healthcare Alliance

It’s not often that labor unions and businesses find issues they agree on, but apparently there is at least one.

It was announced today that the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) will join forces with companies including Wal-Mart and AT&T to address the lack of health care coverage in the United States.

The coalition will be called “Better Health Care Together,” and includes a slew of companies and non-profit organizations. More details may be found at Think Progress:

Better Health Care Together plans to recruit business, labor and civic leaders committed to making health care reform a reality; enlist support for the principles from national, state and local elected officials, policymakers, candidates and opinion leaders; and persuade workers and customers that the current health care system needs to be reformed.

Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott said, “By following this campaign’s common sense principles, we believe America can have high quality, affordable and accessible health care by 2012.” SEIU’s Andy Stern added, “We need fundamental change, and it is going to take new thinking, leadership, new partnerships, some risk taking, and compromising to make it happen.”

The coalition’s principles include making sure that everyone has quality health insurance that’s affordable, and revamping America’s health care system to achieve that goal. 

Erin Rosa was born in Spain and raised in Colorado Springs. She is a freelance writer currently living in Denver. Rosa's work has been featured in a variety of news outlets including the Huffington Post, Democracy Now!, and the Rocky Mountain Chronicle, an alternative-weekly in Northern Colorado where she worked as a columnist covering the state legislature. Rosa has received awards from the Society of Professional Journalists for her reporting on lobbying and woman's health issues. She was also tapped with a rare honorable mention award by the Newspaper Guild-CWA's David S. Barr Award in 2008--only the second such honor conferred in its nine-year history--for her investigative series covering the federal government's Supermax prison in the state. Rosa covers the labor community, corrections, immigration and government transparency matters. She can be reached at erosa@www.coloradoindependent.com.

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