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.
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.
(Much more going on around universal healthcare than the usual Beltway Banditry dominating the news. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
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.
While the federal window remains open for reform, with two national single payer bills, John Conyers' HR 676 in the House and now Bernie Sanders' S 703 in the Senate, many nurses, doctors, and health activists are turning to the states to lead as well.
(Reform or deform? Things are so bad that they can't prevent SOMETHING from being done. But the corporate powers that be are fighting like mad to prevent it from being anything remotely like what we need. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
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?
Or perhaps it's the caution or lack of will of some liberal groups to press for more fundamental reform--such as a single payer/expanded Medicare for all approach--that permits the industry and its conservative champions in Congress to dominate the terrain.
Why in the world are we allowing the perpetrators of the health care crisis to set the terms of the debate on how to clean up their mess?
Join nurses, doctors, and health care activists Tuesday for a day of calls in Congress and a protest against the insurers as we convey a different message.
The National Nurses Organizing Committee (NNOC) today kicked off a national road show and outreach campaign designed to inform voters about the healthcare proposals of both leading Presidential candidates. 5 swing states will be targeted before the election for this healthcare outreach.
As one nurse from St. Mary's Medical Center Reno put it, "Our patients are voters too, and we're here to get them the information they need."
The road show hits 11 different Nevada cities stops this week-everywhere from Reno to Elko to the Shoshone Reservation-with a striking wrapped bus featuring the nurses' report cards on Obama and McCain. Next week, the bus turns left and heads to Ohio, Pennsylvania, Manchester NH and Bangor ME (along with a visit to healthcare hero Eric Massa, running for Congress in New York.)
As we head into the Democratic convention in Denver, here's a look at where we are in the fight for Guaranteed Healthcare, courtesy of America's RN Union-the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee-which is working closely with the Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) to unify party support for HR 676, the bill to end our healthcare crisis through an expanded and improved "Medicare for All."
I'll sum it up: among Democrats at least, there now seems to be a common vision of guaranteed healthcare, thanks to progressive activism.
At the same time, the movement has to deal with lobbyist-driven fake reform groups undermining the national desire for genuine reform, and with a healthcare crisis that is worse than ever. On a national stage, Conyers' bill HR 676 continues to gather support, while Obama repeats that he would support single-payer, if he were starting from scratch.
In an extraordinary convention just concluding in Puerto Rico, here's what you didn't hear from Andy Stern's paid PR blitz. SEIU was under siege throughout by protest encampments of the popular Puerto Rican Teachers' Union, responding to SEIU's raid of the island's largest union-- during a strike to improve horriffic educational conditions.
Inside the convention, to the detriment of the overall labor movement, Stern successfully squashed the internal dissent by SEIU's democracy activists, thereby further concentrating power in himself. The CEO model.
And in an extraordinary development, Stern announced that SEIU is basically doing away with labor reps in favor of outsourced call centers...which makes sense, in that if you sign no-strike promises to your employer, why would you need to mobilize your members?
There's more! SEIU is continuing its war against state and national RN unions by now picking up John McCain's frame of attacking "government-run healthcare" as their latest salvo against the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (AFL-CIO). If anyone doubted SEIU's willingness to sell out genuine healthcare reform in a second, doubt no more.
Attendees of the SEIU Convention in Puerto Rico are facing a protest encampment and multiple pickets by Puerto Rican teachers, parents and schoolchildren, furious at Andy Stern and his North American union for their efforts to bust a historic strike and take over the independent Puerto Rican Teachers Union (FMPR-Federacion de Maestros de Puerto Rico).
The Puerto Rican convention center hosting the Service Employees International Union's big confab is kind of an eerie cross between Superman's Fortress of Solitude and a prison in some isolated part of rural California. The entire complex was fenced in or gated off, with police and security guards posted at every entrance. Apparently the looming threat is the Puerto Rican teachers, whose union is known by its Spanish acronym FMPR. About 100 teachers gathered outside the convention center Saturday morning to protest SEIU's raid on their union (read the full story from the February Labor Notes). In January the FMPR was decertified by the Puerto Rican government for authorizing a strike. The decertification coincided with SEIU's announcement that they were affiliating a rival teacher union and making plans to scoop up Puerto Rico's 40,000 teachers.
The union will provide resources exclusively to the GOP this fall, the person said. Union leaders, joined by key health care industry figures, met Friday with Sen. Bruno to discuss how to help the GOP hold control.
The Reps hold the Senate in this blue state by a 32-30 margin, which is very bad news for a wide range of progressive causes, especially healthcare. This SEIU-Republican deal is instructive for those following the debate within the labor movement between Andy Stern's SEIU and the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, much of which turns on the political profiles of the unions and on CNA/NNOC's work towards guaranteed healthcare.
A major reason for the increasing controversy surrounding SEIU International has been their lack of commitment to genuine healthcare reform-and in fact their active attempts to undermine and sink patient-centered, single-payer reforms.
Progressive elements in the labor movement (and their own union) have long been aware of this problem, as have healthcare and single-payer activists around the country.
This story is now entering the wider public discussion as SEIU International embarks on new partnerships with corporate America and, all too often, Republican power brokers. We'll take a look, below, at their latest partnership, this one with the National Federation of Independent Business and the National Association of Realtors, to support a bill that hurts patients in the name of increasing insurance corporation profits-and, perhaps, winning employer sanction for SEIU organizing.
...for more background, please visit the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee's new site, ServingEmployersInsteadofUs.
Unbelievable. Yesterday most of California's major insurance corporations (Blue Shield, Kaiser, Cigna, etc. etc.) testified in support of Arnold Schwarzenegger's healthcare reform bill…and the donations they have given to Assemblymembers was money well-spent, as the bill passed and was sent to the Senate.
While politicians debate individual mandates-a/k/a forcing Americans to purchase expensive, unworkable insurance products from the very corporations who brought you our healthcare disaster-more evidence rolls in about how Americans are being bankrupted by their health insurance.
From Iowa to California to Massachusetts, the national healthcare debates are finally starting to hit the key point: the problem of the health insurance corporations. We'll take a look below…cross-posted at the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association's Breakroom Blog, as we organize for GUARANTEED healthcare on the single-payer model.
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