Taking It to the States: The Wisconsin Labor Initiative on Health Care

This article examines the experiences of the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO and its leadership in developing and advancing a long term strategy to resolve what has become a primary collective bargaining problem: maintaining employer-based health care coverage that is both sufficient and affordable to workers, within the context of the ongoing crisis in costs inherent in the American system of privatized and fragmented health insurance. The paper explores the unique solution that has been proposed in Wisconsin: a modified single-payer plan, under the auspices of the state, but with a union-management oversight commission, and a partnership between state government and private health care providers. The solution is assessed in terms of its political viability and the extent to which it might serve as a model for health care reform elsewhere.