A Medical Device Daily

In a story last week, the Detroit Free Press said the “gamble” by the United Auto Workers (UAW) that it can manage the healthcare costs of up to 700,000 people comes with a side wager over how much the union can boost its influence in the healthcare debate in Washington.

A writer in the newspaper’s Washington bureau said that debate “will be key to whether the union can contain healthcare costs enough to keep its $52-billion fund for retiree healthcare solvent. And the union’s deal with Detroit’s automakers includes a boost to its lobbying efforts though a $30-million pledge toward a new think tank called the National Institute for Health Care Reform.”

While the sheer scope of the UAW’s healthcare plan will make it one of the largest buyers of healthcare in the U.S., experts say its sway over future healthcare reform may hinge more on which party wins the White House in 2008, the Free Press report said.

The UAW’s new role as healthcare shopper is “a very interesting development, and it has some potential for getting a handle on costs,” said Bill Vaughan, senior policy analyst for Consumers Union in Washington.

The story noted that healthcare reform has been a key part of the UAW’s political goals for decades. In 1968, the UAW’s then-president, Walter Reuther, set up the Committee for National Health Insurance, denouncing what he called a “disorganized, disjointed, antiquated, obsolete non-system” of healthcare that left tens of millions of people without health insurance.

The Free Press said the UAW “still supports some form of a national healthcare system and backed the Clinton administration’s efforts in 1994. But with the second Bush administration steadfastly opposed to any such move, the UAW has focused its lobbying on other healthcare problems, such as controlling costs, expanding Medicare and seeking government aid for automakers’ retiree healthcare costs.”

With the union set to assume control of the healthcare costs for 540,000 retirees and their families, and 180,000 active workers when they retire, the UAW will become one of the largest buyers of healthcare in the nation, behind the federal government and the California Public Employees’ Retirement System.

“I think people will be sitting up and taking notice,” said UAW chief lobbyist Alan Reuther, a nephew of Walter Reuther. “It doesn’t alter the fact that we still need fundamental reform.”