I’m pleased to launch the AFL-CIO’s breakthrough “Fair Share Health Care” campaign. Beginning this month, the AFL-CIO and its unions, together with progressive state legislators and other allies, will be introducing and pushing legislation in more than 30 states to stop large, profitable corporations -- like Wal-Mart -- from freeloading off their communities and shifting their employees’ health care insurance costs onto workers, taxpayers and smaller businesses.

Health care is a basic need of every family. It's nothing short of immoral that big, rich companies are shirking their responsibilities to their employees -- we're talking about mothers and fathers who are pushed to tears because they can't take their children to the doctor. And it’s happening every day.

You know the facts: 46 million Americans -- most of them in WORKING families -- live without health insurance.

And literally thousands more lose their insurance each day, as good-paying jobs with benefits continue to be destroyed.

To make matters worse, those companies that DO provide insurance are increasingly shifting the cost onto workers and cutting back on the benefits they provide, pushing hundreds of thousands of workers and their children into Medicaid programs all over the country.

The bottom line is that our health care system is broken -- but it didn't just split open. Big companies like Wal-Mart are pulling it apart and profiting at taxpayers’ expense.

Between 2001 and 2004, the number of uninsured people in the U.S. rose by a staggering 5 million, with nearly the entire increase accounted for by a decline in employer-sponsored health insurance coverage. Today, more than one-quarter of workers in companies with 500 or more employees do not receive employer-based coverage, according to a study by the Commonwealth Fund.

As a result, around the country, workers, taxpayers and other businesses are forced to pick up a staggering $113 billion when profitable companies refuse to shoulder their employees’ health care costs.

Workers who have family coverage are forced to pay more and more each year, and at every bargaining table, those workers lucky enough to have a union are fighting to hold on to their health care coverage.

When employers shirk their responsibility to pay employee health care costs, who suffers? Responsible businesses, workers and taxpayers.

Businesses that play fair and provide health care for their workers are forced to shell out over $30 billion to cover those other businesses’ workers. That’s in addition to the estimated $150 billion they spend on their own workers’ health care costs.

Meanwhile, Medicaid’s skyrocketing costs are being driven even higher by profitable employers who tell their workers to sign up for the program rather than give them health care.

Why should a company like Wal-Mart -- who made $10 billion last year alone - - be able to force taxpayers to foot the bill for their health care costs?

A problem this big deserves a national solution, but the Washington of Tom DeLay and Bill Frist isn't listening to working people, so we're going to take it on state by state -- much like we’ve done in trying to raise the minimum wage. We cannot afford to stand by and wait for the federal government to take action on these issues critical to working families - - and we won’t.

This is why AFL-CIO unions are taking bold steps and paving the way -- state-by-state and piece-by-piece -- towards health care reform through our landmark Fair Share Health Care campaign in some 30 states.

AFL-CIO unions have been working hard on this landmark legislation since early last summer. And we are proud to announce our final product.

Our Fair Share Health Care legislation would set a minimum standard for health care; it requires large employers to pay their fair share for health care (defined as a percentage of total wages) or pay into a state fair share health care fund that can be used to provide or subsidize health care for uninsured workers in the state.

The Fair Share Health Care bill is pro-worker and pro-business: It stops the largest and most profitable employers from forcing smaller employers to pick up the tab.

Survey after survey shows that voters wholeheartedly endorse requiring large employers to take responsibility for their workers’ health care. An overwhelming 83 percent of American voters support rules requiring that big, profitable companies provide health insurance for their workers or pay into a health care fund that will cover them, according to a November poll by Lake Research.

So this month, as legislative sessions resume, we will begin introducing our Fair Share Health Care bill in dozens of states throughout the country.

Some states which have been targeted as part of the campaign are: Colorado…Washington…Connecticut…Iowa …Michigan…Georgia…Wisconsin…just to name a few.

A long-term strategic grassroots campaign will follow in each state in the coming weeks and months. We’ll talk to union members about the need to hold large corporations accountable for their health care insurance costs and we’ll build an active movement of phone calling and letter-writing and public events to hold state lawmakers accountable on this critical issue.

America’s workers deserve better and America’s largest companies can certainly afford to do right by them.

Contact: Esmeralda Aguilar 202-637-5018