SEIU: Senate bill is unsatisfactory

The Senate healthcare bill is too weak, but the SEIU will fight to improve it instead of working for its defeat, the union chief suggested in a letter to supporters today.

Andy Stern, president of the union, took issue with the bill's tax on high-end insurance policies and lamented that the legislation wouldn't sufficiently lower costs for consumers or hold insurance companies accountable.

"For many people, care will still be too expensive to afford," he wrote to members. 

Stern also took a shot at Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), whose unexpected opposition to the Medicare buy-in doomed what many liberals saw as a satisfactory substitute for the public option.

"[A]t the very moment that we saw real and meaningful changes within our grasp, one Senator came forward to say 'no we can't,'" Stern wrote. "He can't let the Senate have an up-or-down vote on health insurance reform."

But notably, Stern did not say the union would oppose the bill. Instead, he repeatedly said that the union would "fight" to improve the bill before a final vote.

"SEIU does not accept that this monumental effort - that this reform that is so necessary to the health and wellbeing of our economy, our families and our future - can be over without a fight," Stern said. "A fight to make it work for you and your families."