WASHINGTON — The American Apparel Manufacturers Association has endorsed a broad set of proposals for health care reform that rejects employer mandates and requires labor and management to cooperate in setting benefit levels.
“We think every employer ought to make [health care insurance] available” for full-time and regular part-time workers, said Larry Martin, director of government relations. “As to paying, that’s up to them. We don’t think the government ought to decide that.”
Nevertheless, the AAMA plan relies on the government to set “a minimum level of benefits” that employers should make available to their workers.
None of the plans now on Capitol Hill contains all of the AAMA’s ideas, so the organization will continue to withhold its endorsement of any specific plan, said Martin. However, the AAMA is sending its ideas to the six Congressional committees crafting health care legislation. They are expected to come up with a draft plan in July.
Major changes are needed in the health care system if the U.S. industry is to remain competitive internationally, Martin said. An AAMA survey found that apparel manufacturers spend about 16 percent of their earnings on employee health insurance.
“The cost of health care is so high in an industry with very, very small profit margins like this [that] it’s a real problem,” Martin said. “We just can’t afford to compete in the world if the cost of health care is going to continue growing as much as it has.”
Martin said it is impossible to determine how much money the AAMA’s proposals would save the industry.
The plan, developed by a task force headed by John C. Adams, president and chief executive officer of Russell Corp., Alexandria City, Ala., calls for tort reform, preventive care, Medicaid and Medicare reform, tax deductibility of health care costs for corporations and health coverage that employees can take with them when they leave or become ill.
It rejects mandatory alliances, price controls and the right of insurance companies to refuse to cover people who are already ill.