Below David Welch, an RN from Chico California, gives his first-person account of traveling to Phoenix for the historic duty of founding the nation's first union of, by, and for RNs.
This is obviously a great day for labor, as we have a progressive/rapidly-growing/important new union in a key industry and social issue. Also a great day for California nurses who will be able to take their efforts national...
On to David...
I'm writing from Phoenix Arizona where I just spent the morning with hundreds of nurses from around the country finalizing the creation of the new nurses union that will transform health care in America: National Nurses United. Nurses and leaders from The California Nurses Assn./National Nurses Organizing Committee, the United American Nurses and the Massachusetts Nurses Assn are meeting to create a new union that will stretch from coast to coast and unite 150,000 nurses into a powerful force for our profession and our patients.
Does passage of a bill that funnels millions of additional Americans into the private insurance system, and the decision of House leaders to shut down debate on one single payer amendment and scuttle another, mean the end of the years of efforts by single payer activists to win the most comprehensive reform of all?
Does it mean the end of SB 810, even once Governor Schwarzenegger has wandered off the stage?
For the nation's nurses and the many grassroots activists, the answer is clearly no. And we've got work to do.
16,000 Registered Nurses at 39 Catholic Health systems hospitals across California will strike this October 30th in an urgent bid to improve patient safety standards at their facilities, especially as the swine flu comes barreling down upon us.
This strike marks a continuation of a months-long effort by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC) to raise alarms about inadequate H1N1 hospital safeguards, and patient sfety in general.
In August, CNA/NNOC releaseda major report of a survey of 190 U.S. hospitals where RNs cited widespread problems with poor segregation of patients, lack of sufficient N95 masks, numerous hospitals where nurses have been infected, inadequate training for hospital staff, and punitive sick leave policies.
In particular, the RNs say, many hospitals continue to do a poor job at isolating patients with H1N1 symptoms and other steps to limit contagion, or provide sufficient fit-tested N95 respirators and other protective gear for healthcare workers and patients.
Far and away the most exciting industry for the labor movement today is healthcare-and the air of historic change was in the San Francisco air this week as more than 1,200 registered nurses from across the country gathered to plan their coming merger...and to advance their patient advocate's agenda of guaranteed healthcare on the single-payer model and of genuine labor law changes to allow every nurse to freely choose her union. The RNs are members of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, and their guests from United American Nurses and Massachusetts Nurses Association.
The 1,200 nurses broke from their meeting to make a special house call to Dianne Feinstein, and deliver roses along with hand-written pleas for her to support the Employee Free Choice Act. She's in DC, but we're sure she'll get the message that we expect her to help nurses join unions and save lives. That change alone will significantly improve our healthcare system.
You would think that Sen. Feinstein would be a co-sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act, wouldn't you?
Representing this state, coming from her city, in light of the broken union election system we face and the heartbreak it inflicts on American workers...she should.
RNs are especially invested in the Employee Free Choice Act because unionized nurses save lives, and because hospital owners are some of the most vicious, unethical, and criminal union-busters out there.
So tomorrow, 1200 RNs will make a house call to Sen. Feinstein's house, demanding that she cosponsor this life-saving, long-overdue legislation. They'll leave a rose with a personalized note explaining their story of how being a unionized RN has changed their life...or saved someone else's.
As our favorite politicos fall all over each other to see who can further erode the healthcare package likely to emerge from Congress, it's worth recalling that there is another way.
Is the public option that some have deemed the sword we should all fall on in the healthcare debate little more than fool's gold?
In the wake of the now widely touted New York Times poll this weekend that showed 85 percent of Americans believe our health care system should be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt and that people are even willing to pay more in taxes to get that kind of system, the next question ought to be why are Democrats and some liberal constituency groups willing to settle for so little?
From the news pages to the blogs, some progressive activists are counting up the votes and what can be done to persuade 12 recalcitrant Senators and a number of insurance industry fans in the House to vote for a "robust" public option.
The tradition of brave and proud nurse activism for guaranteed healthcare on the single-payer model continued today thanks to Janice Webb, RN, and her nurse intervention at the convention of the health insurance industry in San Diego, AHIP. They're the lobbyists for the insurance giants who make money by denying care to the very patients that Janice cares for at UC-San Diego Medical Center.
Today's meeting of the nation's leading single payer activists with Sen. Max Baucus was historic, and a recognition of the power of the tens of thousands of nurses, doctors, and grassroots activists across the country who have been turning up the heat on the policy makers in Washington.
Make no mistake - your voices are being heard. And, the protests and pressure will continue.
As Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, told Baucus, "there is a groundswell" across the country that will continue to press for single payer reform, and Baucus and other policy makers in Washington "are going to get to know us very well." In a later press conference, DeMoro blasted the conventional wisdom that single payer is not politically viable. "Is it politically viable to let people die and suffer from a lack of political will?" Noting the fight for women's suffrage and the civil rights movement, she emphasized, "we're going to have to turn up the heat. Women did not get the right to vote by voting on it."
What was Max Baucus thinking at his appearance at the "newsmakers" breakfast of the Kaiser Family Foundation Thursday when in the space of a few minutes he made the following two statements about healthcare reform:
"Everything's on the table. Everything. All proposals. All ideas that groups may have are on the table. And they're going to stay on the table. We are going to discuss them."
And, then two minutes later, pressed to explain why he continues to gag discussion of the option most favored by nurses, doctors, and tens of thousands of consumer activists, single payer, Baucus can say:
"It would be nice if something made sense for a change." – Alice, from Alice in Wonderland.
Perhaps we live in an alternative universe.
One in which two thirds of Americans want the government to guarantee healthcare for everyone, while the policy makers in Washington labor to craft a reform plan that caters first to the threats and demands of the insurance industry and the minority voices on Capitol Hill.
With Max Baucus' Senate Finance Committee continuing to shut out the voices of single payer advocates while rolling out the red carpet for the insurance giants and other health care corporations, five more were arrested today and dozens of other nurses stood before the committee in a dramatic silent protest.
Today's action -- the second in a week that led to 8 arrests -- coincided with the anniversary of the birth of Nightingale. It also marked the kickoff of two days of actions by nurses from around the country who are pressing for a legislative agenda for quality nursing care and a single standard of quality care for all.
1. Karen Ignani, the president of the insurance industry trade lobby, America's Health Insurance Plans, offers to end the outrageous industry practice of charging women more than men for health coverage, and is widely praised for the concession.
Even though the reprehensible practice of institutionalized gender bias should have been considered out of bounds long ago. The industry was not even shamed by the report last fall by the National Women's Law Center that insurers charged 40-year-old women up to 48 percent more than men of the same age for the same coverage.
And even though the "offer" remains conditional. AHIP continues to demand conditions in health reform proposals now before Congress, including a requirement that all Americans currently without coverage be forced to buy private insurance, and that Congress block any inclusion of a public alternative to private insurance. Now they've increased the ante and want federal pre-emption of state-based public protection regulations on insurers, such as requirements in a number of states that private insurers must cover such critical basics as maternity care or preventive cancer screenings.
After years of shredding our public health infrastructure and ill advised minimal preparations for the next great global pandemic, the spreading swine flu threat is at last making clear the very real calamity that could be just around the corner. If not today, surely from the next epidemic.
The Obama administration's call on Congress Tuesday to allocate $1.5 billion for combating the virus is a start, but only a start. The RNs of the National Nurses Organizing Committee and California Nurses Association (NNOC/CNA) believe that far more is needed in federal action, in regulatory crackdown on insurance practices that potentially inhibit those who are infected from seeking help, and in global coordination.
From SARS to avian flu to the swine influenza, the only question has not been if, but when.
In Canada, it took the dogged determination of one province, Saskatchewan, and a visionary leader Tommy Douglas, to pave the path to a national health care system, which they call Medicare.
For all the detractors of the Canadian system in the studios of Fox News and the board rooms of rightwing think tanks, consider this one note: In 2004, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation conducted a national poll to select the greatest Canadian of all time. The winner in a landslide -- Tommy Douglas.
With the final White House Forum on healthcare scheduled Monday, April 6 in downtown Los Angeles, advocates of single payer/guaranteed healthcare have one more opportunity to shake up what has become a dreary conventional wisdom about the presumed acceptable parameters of the debate.
Hundreds of nurses, doctors, healthcare and labor activists will rally at 9 a.m. outside the California Endowment, 1000 North Alameda St., Los Angeles.
It will mark the fifth time, at all five White House regional forums, that the single payer/Medicare for all message will come to the stage, outside and inside the forum. You can extend that to the town hall meeting at the White House last week where the President was asked why we can't have a national healthcare system like they have in other industrialized nations.
Haven't we heard this song before? It sure looks like the people who already control our healthcare system are framing the biggest issues of the present healthcare reform debate.
From the back rooms to the committee hearings to the White House summits to the front pages of the newspapers, the demands of the insurance industry are given enormous deference and accommodation.
Is it fear of Harry and Louise, the insurance campaign that some believe torpedoed the muddled Clinton health proposal? Is it the considerable influence of insurance industry contributions in the pockets of many legislators?
It's time to lay to rest the myth that spending billions on more high tech is the salvation for rising healthcare costs. Some people will peddle any notion to avoid addressing the best way to rein in costs, pushing the insurance companies out of the way with a single payer system.
It's become an article of faith that a national system of electronic medical records would produce huge savings. President Obama made it a centerpiece of his healthcare plan during the campaign (as did Sen. John McCain), and has emphasized it repeatedly in legislation and speeches.
As a first step, the stimulus bill allotted $17 billion in incentives to prod doctors and hospitals to get on board during a five year period beginning in 2011, along with financial penalties if they don't.
While thousands of activists step up efforts to make single payer a part of the national debate on healthcare reform, similar efforts are underway in many state capitals as well.
With a dual purpose. Single payer might end up enacted in a few states first, then spread like a prairie fire across the nation -- the approach that worked for Canada. And the grassroots campaigns in states should reinforce the national push.
California is a case in point. Twice in the last few years, a single payer, Medicare for all style bill has passed the state legislature, only to be vetoed by the insurance companies' ever loyal Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
"In this effort, every voice must be heard. Every idea must be considered. Every option must be on the table." -- President Obama, opening the White House health care summit.
Except one idea, apparently. The one reform that will actually contain health care costs, cited by the President as his main goal, and, as a bonus, solve the healthcare crisis -- single payer, or expanding and upgrading Medicare to cover everyone.
