USA Today reported late last week that according to three recent polls, Americans continue to have dramatic misunderstandings about the health care reform law passed earlier this year.

According to the article, many Americans are unclear on what the law means for them and still believe that it will cut Medicare or ration health care, neither of which is true.  Nearly half of those surveyed even persist in believing the myth that “death panels” will make end-of-life decisions for people.

“The level of ignorance and misinformation is sort of astounding,” says Humphrey Taylor, chairman of the Harris Poll. “It seems people are still reacting to the rhetoric, not the substance of what is in the bill, because they don’t actually know what is or is not in the actual legislation.”

As the country moves toward a huge transformation of the health care system that will lower costs, expand coverage options, offer free preventive care services for seniors, help small businesses with tax credits for providing health care, and prevent insurance companies from denying coverage, too many Americans continue to be in the dark about the details.

That’s why AFSCME put together an online Guide to Health Care Reform, to show members what is in the new health care law and when changes will begin. The online program shows how health care reform will help members and their families.

A new poll out Thursday from the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that a consistent 50 percent of the public supports the health care reform law passed this year while opposition to the law is down to just 35 percent this month.

It’s great news that more people are coming to understand how they, their families and the nation will benefit from health care reform.

Views on Health Reform Law: Over Time (Kaiser Family Foundation)

Unfortunately, the poll showed that Americans, especially senior citizens, continue to have an incomplete understanding of what the health care overhaul means to them. Half of seniors know that health care reform will gradually close the Medicare donut hole that leaves many without coverage for their prescription drugs. Only a third understand that reform will eliminate Medicare’s co-pays and deductibles for some preventive services.

Worst of all, according to the poll, more than a third of senior citizens (36 percent) wrongly think that health care reform will “allow a government panel to make decisions about end-of-life care for people on Medicare.” Those misunderstandings are due, in part, to a misinformation campaign by opponents of reform.

AFSCME is educating its members and the public about the positive impact that the health care overhaul will have on skyrocketing costs and reining in insurance company abuses. We have created an online education program and a series of materials to show how the new reforms in health care will affect Americans in every walk of life.

AFSCME members worked hard to make health care reform the law of the land. We’re dedicated to helping our members and the public understand how positive reform will be for their lives.

Throughout this week, Medicare beneficiaries across the country should be receiving copies of a brochure “Medicare and the New Health Law – What it Means for You” in their mailboxes. The mailing from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services outlines key provisions of the Affordable Care Act for people with Medicare as well as members of their families. The mailing is being sent in both English and Spanish.

Because Medicare is a trusted resource for beneficiaries and their family members, the mailing encourages them to log on to http://www.medicare.gov or call 1-800-MEDICARE to get their questions about Medicare or the Affordable Care Act answered and reminds them to be on the alert for possible scams.

The first benefit that many people with Medicare will receive as a result of the passage of the new law is a one-time check for $250 if they enter the Part D donut hole and are not eligible for Medicare Extra Help. Beginning next year, the Affordable Care Act ensures that Medicare beneficiaries will get free preventive care services like colorectal cancer screening and mammograms, in addition to a free annual wellness visit. The law also includes new tools to help fight fraud by helping Medicare crack down on criminals who are seeking to scam seniors and steal taxpayer dollars.

The brochures can also be downloaded from the Medicare website: English version and Spanish version.

We don’t often think about nurses until we need them. But we should, because by then we probably need the care they provide, and it’s too late to wonder if they’re getting all the help they need.

During National Nurses Week (May 6 – also known as National Nurses Day – through May 12, Florence Nightingale’s birthday) we should honor these front-line caregivers not only with our thoughts, but by urging our state lawmakers to support efforts to improve nurse-to-patient staffing ratios.

Making that a reality in California is AFSCME’s affiliate, United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals (UNAC/UHCP). Representing more than 19,000 registered nurses and other health care professionals, UNAC/UHCP has played a key role over the past decade establishing that state’s mandated staffing ratios.

It has paid off. A newly released study by the Health Research and Educational Trust shows that those ratios are significantly associated with better patient outcomes than in states without such requirements. It also improves nurse retention and job satisfaction. It’s a win-win situation for everyone.

Kathy J. Sackman, RN, president of UNAC/UHCP and an AFSCME International vice president says the study’s conclusions “make us very proud to have fought so hard for state-mandated staffing ratios. As a union of RNs representing RNs and other health care professionals, we know what it takes to improve the quality of patient care – more nurses at the bedside – and what it takes to keep nurses working in hospitals: the ability to deliver great care with less workload stress.”

AFSCME nurses support federal legislation (H.R. 2273/S. 1031) that would establish similar staffing ratios across the nation.

In addition to celebrating its success improving patient care, UNAC/UHCP will observe National Nurses Week by donating $15,000 to Doctors Without Borders to support their Haiti relief operation. You can donate to them here.

AFSCME International donated $25,000 to the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center Earthquake Relief for Haitian Workers fund. Donations to the fund can be made here.

Another priority for AFSCME nurses is the Nurse and Health Care Worker Protection Act. (S.1788 /H.R.2381). It would require the Department of Labor to issue standards designed to reduce injuries to patients, nurses and all other health care workers by requiring the use of mechanical lifts and similar devices when moving patients. It would also require facility operators to establish a safe patient handling and injury prevention plan and maintain a data system to track and analyze injury trends.

AFSCME represents more than 360,000 health care workers (including more than 60,000 nurses) across the nation.

Read more about National Nurses Week here. Also, learn more about AFSCME nurses and health care workers.

Just because President Obama has signed health care reform into law doesn’t mean the falsehoods, distortions and misleading rumors about what’s contained in the legislation have stopped. Jonathan Cohn at The New Republic points out one such rumor that just won’t go away:

If health care reform is so good, why are politicians exempting themselves from it?

It’s a powerful talking point that gets repeated over and over by Republican leaders, on cable news shows and spread via email and online message boards. But it’s not true.

The fact of the matter is, under the new law, members of Congress and their staffs are required to enroll in the insurance exchanges which millions of individual Americans will be enrolling in to buy their coverage.

Cohn points out that it was Republicans who introduced amendments to the legislation requiring lawmakers and staff to enroll in exchanges as part of an effort to make Democrats look bad. But not only did reform advocates accept the change, they embraced it.

[T]he members themselves and the people who work directly for them are all covered. And, far from pointing out the problems of reform, it demonstrates its virtues: The politicians believe in it enough to entrust their own lives, and those of their families, to the new system.

By the way, as part of their “Health Insurance Reform Reality Check” campaign, the White House set the record straight on this very issue back in August 2009 with a video message titled “Congress did not vote to exempt themselves from reform”:

This is just one of many examples of the types of falsehoods being spread about health care reform, and it’s our responsibility as American citizens to stop these sorts of false rumors and get the facts about what’s really in the law.

Learn what health reform means to you by visiting whitehouse.gov and by downloading this flyer prepared for AFSCME members.

U.S. News & World Report has assembled a list of groups who gained the most and had the biggest impact during the campaign for health insurance reform in a report titled “10 Winners in the Healthcare Debate.”

First on the list of health care winners is AFSCME and President Gerald W. McEntee:

We agree — thanks in no small part to your efforts during this last contentious year, AFSCME and our 1.6 million active and retiree members won big when this historic health reform legislation was signed into law. Among the important benefits:

• Helps 32 million Americans afford health care who do not get it today — and makes coverage more affordable for many more. Under the plan, 95% of Americans will be insured.
• Will close the senior prescription drug coverage loophole that most people know as the ‘donut hole.’
• Will prohibit discrimination based on pre-existing conditions, health status or gender. Immediately prohibits health plans from denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions.
• Extends dependent coverage to age 26.
• Bans insurance companies from dropping people from coverage when they get sick.
• Restricts lifetime and annual benefit limits.

So we echo U.S. News and extend well-deserved kudos to AFSCME members, working families, and everyone who worked so hard for so long to make health reform a reality. Congratulations!

AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee’s statement on the final passage of the health care reconciliation bill:

“AFSCME members fought hard to pass President Obama’s health care reform package. We are grateful to President Obama, Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi for their leadership and commitment throughout this entire process. Health care reform is a remarkable achievement. This victory will protect and improve good union health care benefits. It stops the worst abuses of the insurance companies. It gives workers and families without coverage on-the-job access to affordable health care. It ends skyrocketing premiums and caps on benefits. It helps seniors by strengthening Medicare and helps preserve employer coverage for early retirees. It provides critical new funding to states.

“But working families need more help from Washington. We still have important work that needs to be done. Too many Americans are struggling to cope in the worst economy since the Great Depression. Millions are out of work. State and local governments are cutting services to the bone. AFSCME is going to continue the fight to create jobs and restore our economy. Working together, we had a great victory on health care reform. Now, let’s put America back to work. Let’s Make America Happen.

“AFSCME spent more than $10 million on the largest mobilization campaign in our history to pass health care reform. More than 300,000 phone calls and letters were sent to Congress. We used texting and new media. We put ads on TV, online and in the papers. We marched, we lobbied and we prevailed.”

This entry by AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee is cross-posted from Huffington Post and Firedoglake.

Michael Steele, the hapless chairman of the Republican National Committee, was asked a while back by Fox News how he would stop health care reform. “I will be the cow on the track,” he answered. Steele believed that President Obama’s historic effort to end the ongoing abuses of the insurance industry could be stopped even after it had passed both the House and the Senate. As a video posted on the DailyKos website makes clear, cows can’t stop trains. Yet this hasn’t stopped Republican officials all across the country from stepping up to be cows on the track now that health care reform has been signed into law.

Republicans are playing political games as the U.S. Senate considers legislation that would make important fixes in the historic health care reform legislation President Obama signed this week. The reconciliation bill would make health coverage more affordable for seniors and the middle class, and dramatically lessen the burden of an excise tax on working families. Now, Republicans are trying to block passage of those important improvements. They have no shame.

They are introducing amendments that serve no purpose except to derail the fix. Let’s be clear. The Senate should reject every amendment that is introduced to this important corrective legislation. Changes in the proposed law, except those mandated under the rules of the Senate, serve no purpose except to delay the implementation of health care overhaul. Amendments to the reconciliation bill are simply “poison pills,” designed to sabotage health care reform. They are tricks concocted by Republicans. They are cows on the track.

There will be more than enough time in the years ahead to address changes and make improvements in the health care law. This week is not the time to do it. My friend Rich Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, was right when he called on senators to vote no on amendments, even on issues that we would otherwise strongly support. “Republicans are going to use a “kitchen sink” amendment strategy, throwing everything they can at the bill to try to sink reform,” Rich notes. “Working families won’t be fooled by dirty tricks from the opponents of health reform out to do the bidding of the insurance companies. And U.S. senators should not be fooled either.”

When we started our work on health care reform three years ago, we set our sights high. But we knew that the final legislation would not include everything we wanted. But this is not new. Major social justice reforms are never achieved in one fell swoop. When the 1957 Civil Rights Act was signed into law, it fell short of what was needed to bring about equal rights. It failed to include key protections like voting rights and access to public places. But it was a start. And it laid the groundwork for future laws that made more progress. Originally, both Social Security and Medicare excluded public sector workers. But over time that has been rectified. The same will be true for health care reform. These bills achieve enormous good and they lay a strong foundation for us to build on.

I was pleased to hear that some supporters of changes in health care reform have decided not to push amendments to the reconciliation bill.

Senator Michael Bennet, one of the Senate’s great supporters of the public option, writes that “the bill before the Senate this week is far too important to use as a political football. This bill would close the senior prescription drug coverage loophole that most people know as the ‘donut hole.’ It would remove the special political deals, like the ‘cornhusker kickback.’ It would further reduce the deficit up to $1.2 trillion over the next two decades and cover even more Americans, bringing the total to 32 million Americans.”

Bennet correctly notes: “This will not happen if the political games continue. That is why public option supporters, including many organizations that have been on the frontline of the fight with me, are urging a vote on the reconciliation bill, without any amendments.”

What we have now is a law that does enormous good for millions of American families by making health care a right for the first time in our history. And it turns out Americans like that idea.

Senate Republicans aren’t the only cows moving onto the track. Just yesterday, Republican attorneys general in more than a dozen states announced that they would challenge the constitutionality of the new law’s requirement that Americans have health insurance or pay a little extra on their federal income taxes. These Republican officials are a disgrace. Every citizen of their respective states is required to buy car insurance before they can drive the car out of the lot. Is that unconstitutional? Of course not. I thought the GOP opposed frivolous lawsuits, but apparently they don’t when they are trying to be cows on the track. What they are doing is wasting taxpayer money to score political points with the extreme and irrational voices that now dominate the Republican Party.

Some prominent Republicans understand that those in their party who have taken extreme positions in opposition to health care reform have done a disservice to our country. Former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum describes it this way: “It’s hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the disaster. We followed the most radical voices in the party, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.” When will others in his party recognize that Americans want Republicans and Democrats to work together with President Obama to lead this country forward? When will they stop acting like cows on the track?

AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee released the following statement regarding the historic vote for health care reform in the U.S. House of Representatives:

“Tonight’s historic vote marks a major milestone in the struggle to break the power of the insurance industry and provide quality, affordable health care for millions of American families. Democrats in the House, with the determined leadership of President Barack Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, demonstrated the courage that is necessary to defeat the special interests and do what is right for the American people. AFSCME members will remember those who stood with us and those who stood with the insurance industry. I have told Senator Harry Reid that we intend to continue our efforts as the battle moves to the U.S. Senate. Together, we will not fail. Tonight, we celebrate a monumentally important victory for our country. Tomorrow, we get back to work in the fight to make health care reform happen.”

AFSCME’s Make America Happen campaign for health care reform has been the largest issue mobilization campaign in the union’s history, generating more than 400,000 phone calls and letters to Congress. In addition, the 1.6 million member union has invested in an aggressive $10 million television, online and print advertising campaign, along with an unprecedented use of texting and new media.

The GOP first aid kit.

AFSCME today began distributing hundreds of first aid kits for protection against the deadly virus of opposition to health care reform being spread by the GOP and their allies.

“The American people shouldn’t believe the insurance industry or the Republican party when they try to hide their opposition to meaningful health care reform,” said AFSCME Pres. Gerald W. McEntee. “The only people in America who oppose health care reform are the people in the pockets of insurance company CEOs making a fortune off of the American people.”

While the American public is demanding affordable health care for all and an end to insurance industry abuses, Republicans have focused on helping the insurance company CEOs.

“It’s time to rein in the abuses and to control skyrocketing costs. It’s time for an up-or-down congressional vote,” said McEntee.

The contents of the first aid kit include hand sanitizer for protection when handling the millions of dollars the GOP has received from the insurance industry, an affordability thermometer to measure the 66% of Americans who want more affordable coverage, and the Glenn Beck tongue depressor — because Americans deserve to hear the facts about insurance company abuses, not demagoguery and fake indignation.

AFSCME is asking members to call Congress today and urge their representatives to finish reform right, to take a stand for working families, and to vote YES on health care reform.

Read the full press release.