Something special is coming up from Nurse Talk and our academic partners. Be the change you want to see in the world and put this on your calendar: Nurse Talk is hosting an informational webinar regarding the online MSN program at the University of San Francisco. Your host is Shayne Mason RN, BSN, PHN, MSN, PMHNP(BC). Shayne is an instructor and alumni at USF and maintains several clinical practices. He is also the co-host of Nurse Talk Radio, where he discusses progressive health care policy to a national audience. He will be discussing the online MSN program, the many and increasing opportunities for nurses with graduate degrees, and how to maximize income potential while doing the greatest good for your community.

The University of San Francisco MSN program Webinar will be held on May 30, 2013 12:00 PM PDT. Please click the link below to register:

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/2138389937501726720

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.  See you there! Read more…

Marin Healthy Palooza May 11, 2013, 10 am – 5pm
Mill Valley Recreation Center, 180 Camino Alto, Mill Valley, CA 94965

You won’t want to miss this unique health fair and festival! Nurse Talk will be there and our fitness guru, Joanie Greggains, will MC the event.

SPEAKERS
Health, Wellness & Relationship Experts

DEMOS
Natural Products, Foods, & Services

Workshops
Health Workshops & Interactive Classes

Fun For All Ages
Multigenerational health & wellness fair

WHERE: Mill Valley Recreation Center,

The Marin Healthy Palooza is a new twist on health fairs. A festival combining education and information designed to update and inform the community about prevention, managing chronic disease and overall wellness for everyone in a fun, low key, non pressure environment. The goal of the Marin Healthy Palooza is to provide solid, trusted health information in an easygoing interactive setting. This event will attract a diverse crowd of attendees and our goal is to reach people who are seeking support and information in a non “clinical” setting.

The 1st Marin Healthy Palooza will consist of health seminars, workshops, demonstrations of natural products and services, and fun activities for everyone, from children to seniors.

We encourage you to bring your friends, family members or co-workers so they may benefit from the information and workshops, or just bring them along to enjoy a fun filled healthy day in beautiful Mill Valley located in Marin County.

Visit www.marinhealthypalooza.org for more information. Read more…

By Deborah Burger, RN, 12/18/12

Registered nurses across the country mourn the loss of life marked by the shooting of innocents in Connecticut. This should be a clear wake up call for the White House, Congress, and state and local legislators to take action to address causes of the violence, including restoring the devastating cuts that have occurred to mental health services across the U.S.

Every day a massive tragedy is being played out on a smaller scale everyday in emergency rooms, in mental health facilities, and on the streets across our country, where, with sometimes devastating consequences, mental health is underfunded to a shocking, and sometimes deadly degree.

Members of National Nurses United, the nation’s largest organization of nurses, say it is time to act with both short term and long term responses. It is incumbent on all of us to:

• Demand private healthcare systems reverse the pervasive cuts to mental health services, especially by profit-focused institutions which view mental health as an easy target for cuts because it is less profitable and has fewer public advocates.
• Increase federal, state and local funding of public mental health programs and public health clinics, which play a crucial role in identifying persons with potentially violent mental health problems.
• Require health insurance companies to provide full coverage for mental health services, and require parity in mental health coverage with other health services.
• Restore school nurses and counselors who are frequently a first target of school budget cuts.
• Challenge the stigma of mental health that undermines mental health programs and stigmatizes people needing mental health care, the overwhelming majority of whom are not violent.

Read more…

Learn More about the Robin Hood Tax!

New York – The U.S. Robin Hood Tax Campaign today applauded the introduction in Congress of a bill that would impose a tax on Wall Street speculation.  Introduced by Rep. Keith Ellison, HR 6411, the Inclusive Prosperity Act,  would raise up to $350 billion in annual revenues that would be used to breathe new life into Main Street communities across America, as well as international health, sustainable prosperity and environmental programs.

The legislation embodies the Robin Hood Tax, a 0.5% tax on the trading of stocks, 50 cents on every $100 of trades, and lesser rates on trading in bonds, derivatives and currencies.  It marks the return of a sales tax on financial transactions in place from 1914 to 1966 and targets the high-risk, high-speed trading that dominates the markets.

“The American public provided hundreds of billions to bailout Wall Street during the global fiscal crisis yet bore the brunt of the crisis with lost jobs and reduced household wealth,” said Rep. Ellison in a press statement.  “This is a phenomenally wealthy nation, yet our tax and regulatory system allowed the financial titans to amass great riches while impoverishing the systems that enable inclusive prosperity. A financial transaction tax protects our financial markets from speculation and provides the revenue needed to invest in the education, health and communities of the American people.”

The legislation’s goal is to raise meaningful tax revenue dedicated to low- and moderate-income families by strengthening the social safety net and by expanding investments to protect health, rebuilding infrastructure and creating good-paying jobs.  Read more…

Many private nonprofit California hospitals, especially those that are part of big corporate chains like Sutter and Kaiser Permanente appear to be exploiting their tax-exempt status by accumulating huge profits, and handing top execs massive pay packages while providing scant charity care in return.

That’s the finding of a new report by the Institute for Health and Socio-Economic Policy, research arm of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United, that was presented Wednesday in a Sacramento legislative hearing.

The nurses urged legislators to pass legislation to rein in the abuses by requiring minimum levels of charity care that all hospitals must provide to keep their tax exempt status, as well as more rigorous reporting requirements with real penalties attached for violators.

 
The findings were presented to a special California Senate Select Committee on Charity Care and Nonprofit Hospitals chaired by State Sen. Ellen Corbett.

In California, non-profit hospitals harvested more than $1.8 billion in government subsidies and benefits from their tax exempt status beyond what they provided in charity care in 2010.

The impact is especially severe on struggling cities and counties. They lose more than $1 billion as a result of the tax exemption of nonprofit hospitals, and what local governments pay directly to hospitals in their communities to provide hospital care for the poor.

Shockingly, many non-profit hospitals actually provide “significantly less” charity care than do for-profit hospitals, State Board of Equalization member Betty Yee said at the hearing.

Several of the state’s biggest and best known hospitals, Cedars Sinai Medical Center, Stanford University Hospital, and Sutter Health’s California Pacific Medical Center and Alta Bates Medical Center, are the biggest abusers in racking up government subsidies in the form of favorable tax benefits beyond what they give back in charity care. Read more…

Originally posted August 7th, 2012 2:25 PM on MichaelMoore.com

My tweet yesterday said I’d write about the three pieces of mail I received from my insurance company, Aetna, this week. All three confirmed it. In their eyes and in every manner of decision they make, I am either a medical loss if a claim must be paid or I am a profit if they can deny me.

If only we had Medicare for all for life…

My first piece of mail from Aetna was the first round of denials of the medication my doctor ordered to help reduce my gut pain as diagnostic effort and other care continues. That instantly made me upset which also makes me feel worse.

If only we had Medicare for all for life…

But it was second piece of mail from Aetna that gnaws at me more. The letter informed me that my employer would be getting a rebate check since Aetna failed to meet the amounts they needed to in approved/paid claims. The letter was a bit celebratory in that it told me that my employer could choose to use the funds for other employee health costs, but I wasn’t celebrating. It would have made me happy and healthier to have my medication. While I am sure many employers were pleased to get their insurance rebate checks, I also suspect few will actually use those funds to better the health of their employees in any significant way.

If only we had Medicare for all for life…

My gut doesn’t feel good. Read more…

Nurses are traveling throughout California to promote Medicare for All. Nurses are on the front lines every day with patients who cannot afford care. Now President Obama’s Affordable Care Act mandates that people buy health insurance, but the insurance companies are still in charge, able to set rates and deny procedures. Nurses in California support an improved Medicare for All, with everybody in, nobody out of health care.

Find out more at:

www.nationalnursesunited.org
www.calnurses.org

Click on the big red bus for a tour schedule and info on how you can get involved. Read more…

Saturday, July 14th
8 pm

a.Muse
614 Alabama St.
SF, CA 94110
415.279.6281

Buy Tickets HERE!

As part of Eric Jaffe’s C- and Another Night of Solo Performances, RN Terri Tate will perform “An Angel in Hell’s Kitchen”  the story of redemption with a jazz pianist in NYC. Two bouts of near fatal oral cancer put her life and voice in jeopardy, but Tate has shared her recovery as a means of both entertaining and inspiring others. Terri’s solo show, Shopping as a Spiritual Path, has played to packed houses and standing ovations from Berkeley to Boca Raton.

Terri’s been a guest on Nurse Talk and she’s got the goods! San Francisco Bay Area folk, get to a.Muse on Saturday!

a.Muse welcomes NYC writer and comedian Eric Jaffe, and four other local Bay Area solo performers to a night of comedy and storytelling which promises to have a little something for everyone. Tickets are $12.

Jaffe will perform two characters from his solo show, “C-”, which asks the question:

“What is the real value of a college education for students who spent four years tapping kegs instead of opening books?”

Based on interviews with 65 of Eric Jaffe’s hard-partying, now middle-aged fraternity brothers,  “C-“ is a humorous and poignant exploration of the gap between the world as it is often understood by college students and the reality of earning a living after graduation.

Also on the night’s bill…

Cory Reddish:
Game Set Match

Elizabeth Sale:
My Visit with the Psychic

Ann Swanberg:
Seven Traits of
Highly Miserable People

Terri Tate:
An Angel in Hell’s Kitchen Read more…

Big news out of National Nurses United’s Staff Nurse Assembly in Chicago last weekend was the rally in Daly Plaza supporting a half percent tax on stock trades.  Nurses have aligned with the worldwide Robin Hood Tax Campaign say:

We’re committed to rebuilding America by introducing a small tax on Wall Street transactions.

We believe it’s time to rewrite the contract between banks and society.

We are charities, green groups, trade unions, community organizations, celebrities, religious leaders and politicians.

We are businesspeople – Microsoft founder Bill Gates, financier George Soros, entrepreneur extraordinaire Warren Buffet

We are economists – Nobel Prize winners Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, Earth Institute Director Jeffrey Sachs and 1,000 other economists from across the world.

We are thought leaders – the Vatican, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Al Gore, Jesse Jackson and Ban Ki-Moon.

We are world leaders – President Hollande of France, Chancellor Merkel of Germany, among others.

We are part of a global movement representing over 220 million people in 25 countries.

We are a force to be reckoned with, and we’re demanding justice.

Are you?  Learn more at robinhoodtax.org.

A May 15, 2012 blog post on the site, Nurses Push Tax on Trades to Help Sick,  shared by Sarah Anderson Director the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C first appearing in the Chicago Sun Times, quotes NNU President RoseAnn DeMoro, “RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United, says there’s a simple explanation: “The big banks, investment firms and other financial institutions, which ruined the economy with trillion-dollar trades on people’s homes and pensions and similar reckless gambling, should pay for the recovery.”

Nurses have been on the front lines of the crisis, seeing firsthand the health impacts of skyrocketing poverty and record high rates of uninsured Americans. Read more…

Nurse Talk will be there. Will you?

Robin Hood Joins Nurses’ Campaign to Heal America – Chicago Friday, May 18.

What in the world? The registered nurses of National Nurses United cannot wait to welcome one of the world’s leading defenders of common people to their uncommon May 18th march and rally in Chicago. It’s time for Robin Hood to lend his legendary fame of days gone by to help with the nurses’ campaign to heal the modern-day financial traumas faced by real people at the hands of Wall Street.

It won’t be Sherwood Forest where Robin Hood and the nurses will be marching and rallying but through the streets of downtown Chicago, from the Sheraton Downtown at 11 a.m., to Daley Plaza a little after noon. With a sense of festive political messaging but also with the courageous clarity nurses bring to their advocacy for doing what is best for their patients, their communities and nation, and the world, the eyes of the world will turn to Chicago to learn what a Robin Hood Tax is and why such a tax is the right way to heal so many of the fiscal problems we face.

Read more…