Heal the world economy!

Are you ready for Thursday? That’s when nurses and other community activists are going to press President Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for a meaningful financial transaction tax. Nurses from four continents, including a delegation from NNU, will be at the opening of the G-20 summit in France to demonstrate how to “inject an FTT” to resuscitate the ailing global economy.

List of events:
G-20 Summit: 9:45 a.m., Salon Palm, Casino Palm Beach, Place Franklin Roosevelt – Pointe de la Croisette, Cannes, France

Washington, D.C.: Rally, Lafayette Square, 11:30 a.m., followed by march to U.S. Treasury Department. Nurses head to Capitol Hill to lobby Congress at 3 p.m.

Los Angeles: March from OccupyLA site, 11 a.m., First and Main, rally, plaza adjacent to U.S. Bank, W. 633 5th St.

San Francisco: March 11 a.m., from 101 Market, across from the Federal Reserve Bank, rally at 12 noon, Wells Fargo bank headquarters, 464 California St.

Read the full press release at nationalnursesunited.org.

If you haven’t seen that little musical that took us all by storm a few years ago–Menopause The Musical–here’s your chance to see it in concert.

I’m telling you it is so much fun and some of us at Nurse Talk have seen it –well too many times to count. It’s now in concert and the tour is coming to California.

AND they are offering a 10% discount to all nurses and listeners of Nurse Talk. Really don’t miss it! Use code “SG” to buy your tickets (or “Super” for the Santa Cruz show) at www.menopauseinconcert.com/tickets-shows/.

The Vermont legislature has pioneered a bill creating a path for a universal, publicly funded healthcare system. James Haslam from the Vermont Workers’ Center is coming to California to share their story and inspire Californians to do the same. Donna Smith, featured in the movie “Sicko”, is a community organizer and health care activist with the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United, and will join James on a California Health Care Justice Tour.

Please join other concerned community members who are committed to making healthcare available to all Californians.

Together We Can Make This Happen — The California Health Justice Tour is in support of the Campaign For A Healthy California, and is raising funds for it, as well as for the Vermont Workers Center.

Download the tour brochure here.

TOUR DATES

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 18
7:00 p.m. — Los Angeles ILWU Local 26 Union Hall
5625 South Figueroa Street, Los Angeles
Contact: Lisa Patrick-Mudd – (323) 316-8933

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19
7:00 p.m. — Irvine United Congregational Church
4915 Alton Parkway, Irvine
Contact: Bill Honigman – (949) 246-6283

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20
6:30 p.m. – San Diego Machinist ?Local 725 Union Hall
5150 Kearny Mesa Road, San Diego
Contact: Kathy Rallings – (760) 927-0049

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21
7:00 p.m. – South Bay CLC, Hall A
2102 Almaden Rd, San Jose
Contact: Greg Miller – (408) 254-3311
or Katherine – (408) 977-1275, (408) 834-9165

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22
10:00 a.m. – San Francisco St. Mary’s Cathedral
1111 Gough Street, San Francisco
Contact: Jodi Reid – (415) 515-2156
3:00 p.m. – Watsonville Civic Plaza
275 Main Street, Watsonville
Contact: Carol Roberson/Gail Olson – (831) 359-5494

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 23
1:00 p.m. – Sacramento CWA Local 9421 Union Hall
2725 El Camino Avenue, Sacramento
Contact: Carolyn Negrete
cnegrete@comcast.net (916) 424-5316
7:00 p.m. – Fresno CWA Local 9408 Union Hall
4422 E. Ashlan Ave, Fresno
Contact: Judy Hess – (559) 907-0279

MONDAY, OCTOBER 24
6:30 p.m. – Chico Trinity United Methodist Church
285 E. 5th Street, Chico
Contact: Forrest Harlan (530) 513-3594
or Tom Reed (530) 966-3414

Mental health professionals at Kaiser Permanente speak out about understaffing at Kaiser and its impact on patient care, in advance of a statewide strike. Fighting the good fight. We applaud you for your sympathy strike support California Nurses Association and National Nurses United. This is a great video about why Kaiser health care workers are striking. We can all be agents for change. Money is not more important than people.

Kaiser Mental Health Caregivers Speak Up for Patients from Leighton Woodhouse on Vimeo.

Berkeley Rep invites CNA members to save $5 on tickets for the final weekend of Anna Deavere Smith’s smash hit Let Me Down Easy! Anna set the Bay Area ablaze with Fires in the Mirror and Twilight: Los Angeles, and in recent years, you’ve seen her on The West Wing and Nurse Jackie.

With Let Me Down Easy, Anna explores the body and the body politic, a topic that will resonate with your dedicated work as health professionals. Final performances are tonight (Friday) at 8pm; Saturday at 2 at 8pm, and; Sunday at 2pm. To get your discount, you must call our Box Office at (510) 647-2949 between 12 and 7pm and identify yourself as a CNA member. No walk-ups – call now!

This just in from our friends and National Nurses United. Pass it on to your friends and colleagues:

10,000 Nurses & Main Street Residents to Converge at 61 Congressional Offices in 21 States on Sept. 1 with 1 Message: Tax Wall Street to Heal America

RNs to sponsor soup kitchens, street theater, speak outs on the need for jobs, healthcare, education, housing – and outline plan to pay for it cite Wall Street contributions to legislators while home districts in crisis.

From the Atlantic to the Pacific, 10,000 nurses and community participants will join actions in 21 states Thursday, September 1 demanding action on the economic crisis to heal America. They will call on senators and Congress members in their local district offices Thursday  to pledge to “support a Wall Street transaction tax that will raise sufficient revenue to make Wall Street pay for the devastation it has caused on Main Street.”

LEFT: National Nurses say TAX WALL STREET in Times Square – August 2011

Events, from soup kitchens to help feed the hungry, to community speak outs, to street theater are planned from urban centers like Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Orlando, to smaller towns, such as Corpus Christi, Texas, Marquette, Mich., and Dayton, Ohio. National Nurses United, the largest U.S. union of nurses, is sponsoring the actions. Creative events will include a town crier in Boston reading a litany of Wall Street transgressions against America, 8-foot tall puppets, and flash mobs.

Nurses will visit home offices of Republicans and Democrats, with a common message: American families are hurting, and they need jobs, healthcare, housing, quality education, nutrition, and a secure retirement.

In addition, the RNs will release data where available contrasting contributions the legislators have received from Wall Street with plummeting economic conditions in their districts that has left substantial numbers of their constituents in crisis.

Rep. Paul Ryan, for example, a Wisconsin Republican, has accepted $2,417,672 in campaign contributions from Wall Street financial institutions over the past 12 years as a champion for their interests. But the payoff has been small for his district, where 69,241 people are uninsured, 22,884 are dependent on food stamps, and 20,394 children and 7,939 seniors live in poverty.

Similarly, Sen. Michael Bennett of Colorado, a Democrat, has collected $2,409,806 campaign contributions from Wall Street interests while his state languishes in the top 10 for foreclosures, has 184,689 children in poverty, 116,941 people dependent on food stamps, and 13,390 homeless.

NNU will also be calling for the establishment of Main Street commissions to push real solutions for Main Street communities, such as the Wall Street financial tax, as a contrast to what NNU Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro calls “the Wall Street ‘super committee’ set up in the recent debt ceiling deal whose main goal seems to be more cuts in programs that help people to funnel more resources to Wall Street and foreign banks and investors.”

“America’s nurses every day see broad declines in health and living standards that are a direct result of patients and families struggling with lack of jobs, unpayable medical bills, hunger and homelessness. We know where to find the resources to bring them hope and real solutions,” said NNU Co-president Karen Higgins, RN.

A tax on Wall Street trading of stocks, derivatives, currencies, credit default swaps, and futures – which many other nations have now adopted – could raise hundreds of billions of dollars to pay for programs that “are desperately needed to reduce the pain and suffering felt by so many who feel abandoned across this nation,” says NNU Co-President Deborah Burger, RN.

“It’s time for Wall Street financiers, who created this crisis and continue to hold much of the nation’s wealth, to start contributing to rebuild this country, and for the American people to reclaim our future,” says DeMoro.

The $2.4 trillion in government bailouts to financial and other institutions already spent, noted DeMoro, alone would have funded 63 million jobs at the national median level of about $39,000 a year. “Instead, we have over 25 million people who are unemployed or underemployed, and in the past decade U.S.-based corporations added 2.4 million jobs in foreign countries while divesting in America, cutting 2.9 million jobs in the U.S.”

“We need to reallocate the money back to our communities, and our actions on September 1 are going to raise the demand to a new level to heal our nation,” said NNU Co-president Jean Ross, RN.

View the List of Sept. 1 Nationwide Actions and Join Us

Upload & Share Event Videos and Photos @ ProtestInTheUSA.org

View our Multimedia News Release on PRNewswire

Learn More About the Main Street Contract for America

Can’t make an event?

Sign Our Virtual Petition

From our friends at National Nurses United

On September 1, nurses and communities in more than 60 cities across the nation will be hosting soup line actions to draw attention to the needs of Main Street, and to an NNU proposed transaction tax on Wall Street.

It’s already the law in a dozen other nations, including Great Britain and the world’s fastest-growing markets. NNU legislation is being introduced in Congress soon. Stay tuned!

For more information on our National Day of Action, contact your NNU rep or check the National Nurses United web site.

National Nurses United
8630 Fenton Street, Suite 1100
Silver Spring, MD 20910
www.NationalNursesUnited.org

Thanks to the Minnesota Nurses Association for this post and link on their Facebook page:

Pass the barf bag: Hospital CEOs at “Nonprofit” Hospitals in the Midwest make an average of $481,000 in total pay. And when a N.J. hospital goes broke, the CEO gets a six-figure payout while the nurses’ pension goes unfunded.

The story reported at FierceHealthcare.com, says,

Thanks to lowered reimbursements, some struggling hospitals will be forced to shut their doors. Yet weeks before city-owned Hoboken (N.J.) University Hospital filed for bankruptcy, it gave its CEO a six-figure payout upon resignation, reports The Star-Ledger.

Former CEO Spiros Hatiras will receive $600,000 in compensation and full medical benefits for one year, although the organization doesn’t have enough funds to pay its $1.9 million in city-related bills or the $1.45 million it owes to employees’ pension and health funds, according to the article.

“Personally, I think it’s a disgrace that they are giving out a golden parachute while people like nurses are not getting paid,” said one of the most vocal opponents of the sale, Beth Mason of Hoboken City Council.”

Yeah, we do too.

WGAL Channel 8 in Pennsylvania reported today that:

The state Health Department released a report on Carlisle Regional Medical Center that states insufficient staffing may have contributed to the deaths of two patients in June. One died after the patient stopped breathing during a CT scan and was not accompanied by a nurse because of low staffing, according to the report. Another patient died after waiting more than seven hours for a transfer to another hospital for heart surgery, according to the report. The report is based on an unannounced complaint investigation at the hospital that started on June 9 and ended on June 22.

A hospital schedule showed more than 200 nursing shifts were left empty in less than a one-month period. One employee told investigators, “We all fear for our jobs because corporate will fire at will with no reason.” Another worker said, “This is an unsafe place to work and management is aware.”

News 8 called hospital management for comment, but the call has not been returned.

Read more: http://www.wgal.com/news/28811606/detail.html:

THE EVIDENCE IS IN: RN-TO-PATIENT RATIOS SAVE LIVES

A major new study led by one of the nation’s most eminent nurse researchers provides compelling new evidence that California’s landmark RN-to-patient staffing law reduces patient mortality, assures nurses more time to spend with patients, and substantially promotes retention of experienced RNs. “This research documents what California RNs have long known – safe staffing saves lives. We see the effects every day at the bedside in improved patient care, an enhanced quality of life for patients, and nurses able to more safely practice the profession to which we have dedicated our lives,” said Malinda Markowitz, RN, co-president of the California Nurses Association, a National Nurses United founding affiliate.

Why aren’t we surprised? Tell us your stories. Visit National Nurses United’s web site. See what you can do to support safe staffing ratio legislation.

Tell Congress: No Cuts to Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid
Call Your Senators – National Call-In Days: July 14-15

As part of the negotiations to raise the national debt ceiling, Wall Street-funded politicians in Congress and the White House are proposing significant cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. They want to:

Cut Social Security’s COLA – even though Social Security does not contribute one penny to the national deficit, and is financially secure for decades.

Raise the eligibility age of Medicare from 65 to 67 – threatening the health and lives of tens of millions of seniors and people with disabilities who are dependent on Medicare for health coverage.

Implement deep cuts in Medicaid funding, assisting the efforts of governors who have targeted Medicaid for state cuts and endangering tens of millions of Americans who count on Medicaid.

CALL YOUR SENATORS
1-866-251-4044 (toll free)

Tell them:

No cuts to Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. No cuts to Social Security’s COLA.No Social Security payroll tax holiday.

Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid belong to you – you pay for them in every paycheck. Don’t let them cut it or raid it.

What’s behind this attack?

The refusal of leaders of both parties to increase taxes on the wealthiest Americans and Wall Street – despite a huge decline in tax revenues from the top 1 percent of taxpayers and the majority of big corporations that evade taxes.Efforts to privatize Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid and raid these benefits for Wall Street banks, investment houses, and insurance companies. Those who created the economic crisis don’t need more handouts.

NNU has proposed an alternative. Tax Wall Street speculation to rebuild America. We need jobs, healthcare for all, education, and housing for our communities, not more tax breaks for Wall Street, or cuts to our most basic services.

Learn more about NNU’s Main Street Contract for the American People – a new direction that puts Main Street first and asks Wall Street to pay their fair share. We’re collecting stories about ordinary people facing extraordinary economic challenges – share your story, find us on Facebook, take the Main Street pledge, endorse the contract, and know that you and your family are not alone in these difficult times.

National Nurses United
8630 Fenton Street, Suite 1100
Silver Spring, MD 20910
www.NationalNursesUnited.org

National Nurses United Executive Director, RoseAnn DeMoro recently called on RNs nationwide to share stories about how the economic crisis is impacting their lives at home, and in their hospitals and communities. Their heartfelt responses were deeply moving, some of which can be read on the NNU blog.

During a recent shift as a charge nurse I was happy to learn that one of the patients wanted to compliment her RN for the care she received. The patient, who was in her 50s, was eloquent and carried herself elegantly, shaking my hand when I entered the room. A former executive secretary for more than 30 years, she penned her comment card in a beautiful handwritten script. Later that shift, I realized that the patient was the same person I had seen on the boards two weeks ago but never met: a homeless woman. I would have never suspected that this former executive secretary with impeccable penmanship was the same homeless woman if it weren’t written right there in the charts.

The discovery brought me to tears. I went back to visit the patient and learn her story. It’s an all-too-common one: After losing her job, she lost her healthcare, then lost her home and her family. The face of homelessness in America has changed. We have prototypes in our heads of what homeless people should look like, but they look like you and me. Her story also struck a nerve for me because some years ago, after a back injury at work, my husband and I also struggled to pay $1,400 a month in COBRA premiums to maintain our health insurance while I was on medical leave. I was just crushed by this woman, thinking that could be me.

— San Bernardino, California

Share your story

Learn more about the Main Street Contract for America

NNU’s Historic March on Wall Street

More than a thousand RNs and other activists marched on Wall Street Wednesday, chanting “Wall Street got bailed out! We got sold out!”

They stood on the steps of Federal Hall across from the New York Stock Exchange and held signs – “Take it Back! Tax Wall Street” and “Heal America! Tax Wall Street” – so crowds of curious passersby got the message.

It’s time to make Wall Street high rollers who created our economic crisis pay its fair share.

Hundreds of nurses from across the country gathered in the heart of our nation’s financial center on June 22, an International Day of Action, to make that message crystal clear.

“It’s time for their shared sacrifice. They haven’t had any of that. They have been making billions and trillions in profit and they are not giving anything back to our community,” said Deborah Burger, RN and member of the National Nurses United Council of Presidents.

Nurses take on Wall Street

The protest is part of the National Nurses United’s Main Street Contract for the American People’s campaign, which aims to reclaim an economy with good jobs at living wages, healthcare for all, quality education, good housing, protection from hunger, a safe environment, and a secure retirement for everyone.

The mainstream media is ignoring the real stories — the stories of people suffering from budget cuts, homelessness, and lack of healthcare.

Representatives from other community and labor organizations stood with the nurses Wednesday to show their support.

Nurses taking on Wall Street

“We are calling for a more fair and just economy,” said Karen Higgins, RN and member National Nurses United Council of Presidents.

That’s why NNU, with the support from dozens of community and labor organizations, such as the AFL-CIO, United Auto Workers, and Transport Workers Union Local 100, are calling for a Wall Street tax on financial transactions.

“It’s very American…Just like working people pay taxes on all of their purchases. These corporate speculators who buy and sell and buy and sell our country should pay a minimum tax on that,” NNU executive director RoseAnn DeMoro explained to the crowd. “A very minimum tax could amount to at least $350 billion every year that can go back to our communities and go back to jobs and go back to healthcare.”

Similar events, called by the European Trade Union Confederation, were taking place in 35 other countries in support of a similar tax there. The nurses led the protest in America.

The hour-long rally ended with songs of solidarity. The nurses and fellow community activists left Wall Street — waving their signs and yelling “This is what democracy looks like!”

Bystanders joined in the chant as the sea of red scrubs moved down the street.

__________________________________________________________________

* Listen to a recent interview with RoseAnn on the NationConversations
* Read an article about today’s Wall Street protest by Labor Notes
* See photos from today’s Wall Street protest on Flickr
* Join the Main Street Contract for the American People campaign

Donna Smith, a community organizer for National Nurses United, wrote the following for the Common Dreams blog:

Guarding Health is Not Their Business, But It is Ours
By Donna Smith

If for one moment anyone has the notion that for-profit health insurance companies are in the business of guarding the health (or wealth) of policyholders, that notion ought to be quickly dismissed in favor of the truth. For-profit health insurance giants guard profits.

I arrived outside the WellPoint annual shareholders meeting in a hotel in Indianapolis yesterday to be greeted by more guards (and some armed) than I have seen surrounding President Obama at times. Apparently just the prospect of having some of the legal shareholders question the business practices and ethics of the WellPoint board and CEO Angela Braly was very scary for the company and its elite leaders.

Some of the shareholders have in recent years put forward a resolution supporting WellPoint’s return to its non-profit roots. After last year’s meeting, the resolution earned 9.6 percent or 30,000,000 shareholder votes. The current leadership doesn’t like that nor do they like the efforts of the shareholders who keep challenging them.

One shareholder asked Ms. Braly at yesterday’s tightly controlled and guarded meeting, as a sort of speakers’ “shot clock” counted down her speaking time, “Tell me, Ms. Braly, could you please explain what you do that warrants a salary ($13.5 million annually) that is more than 375 public school teachers in Indiana earn?” Braly’s answer was a classic. No shot-clock running for the CEO as she explained that the board sets her compensation and it has to be competitive with the other comparable giants in the insurance industry. It is a breathtaking demonstration of greed and hubris.

Read the rest of the article by clicking here.

It’s telling that Braly would be so blasé in defending her outrageous salary. It’s even more telling that Wellpoint overseers felt the need to surround the building with armed guards. All that’s missing is a moat and a court jester. These people are completely detached from the hardships they are inflicting on their customers. The spectacle of unabashed greed and sense of entitlement that Donna Smith describes here demonstrates how out of whack our country’s priorities have become. Our society now values a small group of profiteers at the expense of the rest of us who are barely scraping by in a difficult economy. Braly and her fellow robber barons produce nothing of value while shamelessly gouging millions of hardworking Americans. Health insurers are simply leeches, and they must be immediately removed from our healthcare system before they suck all of us dry.

Hundreds of people recently waited in line overnight in the bitter cold to receive health care. From the elderly, to students, to women who hadn’t seen a doctor in years; All lined up to receive healthcare from Remote Area Medical (RAM). And many of the people in line wanted to know, why can’t the United States provide health care for everyone?

What are YOU waiting for? The American Health Care Act of 2011, sponsored by Senators Sanders and McDermott, will make universal health care a reality. Support the American Health Care Act;SB 915, HR 2100.

The wait is over when we want it to be.

Find out more at www.nationalnursesunited.org

On Tuesday, May 10, 2011, at 10:30 a.m., EDT, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Representative Jim McDermott (D-WA), held a joint news conference at the Senate Swamp to announce the introduction of the American Health Security Act of 2011 (the Act).

The Act establishes a national healthcare program that requires each participating state to set up and administer comprehensive health care services as an entitlement for all through a progressively financed, single-payer system, as administered by the states. Benefits emphasize primary and preventive care, and free choice of providers. Private health insurance sold by for-profit companies continues in the form of supplemental coverage only.

The American Health Security Act of 2011 has the support of National Nurses United, the California Nurses Association, the Labor Caucus for Single-Payer and its member unions, the Labor Campaign for Single Payer, and the AFL-CIO which, at its convention in Pittsburgh in 2009, unanimously passed Resolution 34 in support of single-payer health care under a social insurance model and recently reaffirmed its support in its executive council resolution addressing national deficit reduction (March 2011).

“Providing a single standard of high quality care for all is a priority for registered nurses who have seen their abilities to act as patient advocates made more difficult as for-profit interests control more patient care decisions. We commend Senator Sanders and Representative McDermott for their vision and passion to help registered nurses create a more just healthcare system through the American Health Security Act and applaud our brother and sisters in labor for their support,” said Jean Ross, R.N. co-president of National Nurses United.

The Act is a manifestation of Congressional findings, including the addition of more than four million uninsured Americans between 2008 and 2009, bringing the total to over 51 million, or more than 1 of every 6 Americans. Businesses are relieved of the burdens of health care administration under the new law.

The Program amends the tax code to create the American Health Security Trust Fund and appropriates to the Fund specified tax revenues, current health program receipts, and tax credits and subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. The tax revenues include a new health care income tax, an employer payroll tax, a surcharge on high income individuals, and a tax on securities and other financial transactions. Transaction taxes include language consistent with other labor efforts around the globe to more fairly fund programs of social uplift.

The federal government would collect and distribute all funds to the states and administrative expenses would be capped at three percent. Each state would have the choice to administer its own program or have the federal Board administer it.

In my view, the fight for universal and comprehensive health care is the civil rights battle of our time. — Senator Bernie Sanders, I-VT

If an insurance company’s objective is to make a profit rather than deliver health care, a patient’s best interests may not always be in the forefront of their thinking. Decisions are made by accountants and actuaries, not necessarily on the basis of what’s best for the patient. — Rep. Jim McDermott, D-WA

If you haven’t spent much time in the hospital, you’ve probably never thought about the difference between non-profit and for-profit facilities. Yet for those in the health care industry, and who have medical conditions that need constant care and the larger community, the difference between the two can be substantial. As a nurse or health care professional, these are issues that may affect how you practice, where you want to work and what kind of facilities are available where you live – so it’s important to know as much as you can. As many communities are divided between those who support and those who oppose for-profit health care, you’ll need to know the facts to make an informed decision. Here are some to get you started, letting you know the pros, cons and stats of for-profit hospitals.

1. Over 17 percent of hospitals are for-profit. In 2002, that number was only around 10%, demonstrating a marked growth in the for-profit health care industry over the past decade, growth that’s expected to continue over the next five years.
2. For-profit hospitals often focus on high-end, high-revenue treatments. Visit a for-profit hospital and you’re likely to see a gleaming cardiac wing, top-notch brain surgeons and fancy CT scanners. What you are less likely to see are family planning services, emergency rooms and psychiatric care. These services have a low rate of return on investment and may actually cost rather than bring in money, so many private institutions opt out of providing them. Of course, there are some for-profit hospitals that provide the bulk of these services (and others) to their local communities.
3. More for-profit hospitals engage in morally questionable practices like patient dumping. A study found that for-profits were twice as likely to dump emergency room patients onto other facilities as not-for-profits. Patients who do not have insurance or whose plans will not cover emergency care were more likely to be transferred, often in a manner that violates the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. Not-for-profits certainly aren’t in the clear here, but the difference between the two is striking.
4. For-profit hospitals are buying out may non-profits. In communities around the nation, many not-for-profit hospitals are struggling to stay afloat. Rising costs, a heavy patient load and outdated equipment make some simply not economically viable. For-profit medical groups are often stepping in and buying these hospitals. While some community leaders are relieved that the hospitals are being saved, others worry that it will be at a cost to the economically disadvantaged in the community. With more hospitals on the auction block every day, the effect of this change is likely to become clear in the coming months and years.
5. It’ll cost you more to go to a for-profit hospital. Not necessarily because they just want to charge you more, though profit margins certainly are an issue. For-profit hospitals don’t get the tax breaks that not-for-profits do, meaning they have to charge more to make up for it. How much? Expect to pay around 19% more for a visit to a for-profit than a not-for-profit.
6. For-profit hospitals have a higher death rate, on average. While the results of the study have been hotly contested, a group of Canadian researchers found that for-profit hospitals have a slightly higher death rate — around 2% higher. While the study found a difference, researchers were unable to pinpoint just what was causing the disparity, but some think it might have to do with for-profits cutting corners in order to generate more revenue. Of course, that number doesn’t mean every for-profit has a higher death rate — it is an average– some may have a much lower chance, while others are much higher.
7. A woman is 17 percent more likely to have a C-section at a for-profit hospital. While the number of C-sections performed nationwide at all hospitals has skyrocketed in the past decade, a fact many see as a direct threat to the safety of both women and their children, a California study found that women are even more likely to get a C-section at a for-profit hospital. The reason isn’t hard to figure out. A surgical birth costs twice as much as a vaginal one, and more C-sections means more profit. Additionally, once that baby is born, it’s more likely to end up in a pediatric ICU, whether it needs it or not, at a for-profit.
8. You’re more likely to get diagnosed with costly conditions at a for-profit. And that would be fine, provided that was really what was ailing you. A study in a German medical journal found that many for-profits may be guilty of up charging. They compared admissions of patients with respiratory infections and pneumonia, two conditions that can be pretty hard to tell apart from a medical standpoint, but with one usually paying about $2000 more to the hospital. Over the past decade, for-profits diagnosed the more expensive condition at rates much higher than that of not-for-profits. Lawsuits have since reduced this phenomena, but more recent data shows that for-profits still routinely cost Medicare more than their non-profit counterparts.
9. For-profit hospitals may have an advantage when it comes to efficiency. There is one area in which for-profits often excel. Because they’re watching the bottom line, for profits are better at reducing waste, streamlining their processes and running a more efficient, tightly managed facility. Of course, there are exceptions, and studies have found that it depends more heavily on ownership than on profit status whether or not a hospital will be efficient.
10. For-profit hospitals may stretch staff more thinly. Because they’re focused more operating efficiency, for-profits often have lower staffing ratios. This may not mean much for patients, as these staff members are usually compensate by being more productive (most patients often rate than standard of care similarly.) Yet it can make a difference in terms of stress and job satisfaction for those who are working in a for-profit institution. A study found that hospital workers are more likely to feel valued as a person, receive praise and feel their job is important at not-for-profits than at for-profits.
11. Dementia patients are more likely to be over treated at a for-profit. The practice of tube-feeding patients with advanced dementia has been widely criticized by the top medical journals and isn’t medically necessary in most cases, yet doctors are still using it as a treatment for dementia patients. While it occurs in for-profits and not-for-profits alike, patients at the former are 33% more likely to be given a feeding tube. It is even more common at large hospitals in either category, with a whopping 50% greater chance of feeding tube insertion in hospitals with over 300 beds.
12. Patients rate higher loyalty and satisfaction in for-profit ERs. While some for-profits might shy away from these low-return facilities, those who do have them tend to have higher rates of patient satisfaction than their not-for-profit counterparts. Some suggest that the reason for this may be due to for-profits having access to greater capital, meaning they can more easily invest in updated equipment and services. Additionally, not-for-profits are often chronically overburdened with patient volume and suffer from short staffing, factors that could reduce overall satisfaction
13. For-profit hospitals rate consistently lower when delivering care for these common conditions: congestive heart failure, heart attack and pneumonia. If you’ve got any of these conditions, or suspect you might, you may be better off heading to a not-for-profit if you have a choice. A 2006 study by the Harvard Medical School determined that patients with these conditions were more likely to get high-quality care diagnosis and treatment for these conditions as not-for-profits– a fact they suggest is due to increased staffing and more technology.
14. For-profit hospitals have lower costs per patient. Whether this is for better or worse for patients is up to you to decide, but Census data in 2008 recorded that the average total cost per patient per stay is about $7,985 at a for-profit hospital compared to $10,081 at a not-for-profit. This could be due to greater cost-cutting measures, efficiency or differences in staffing at for-profits versus their counterparts.
15. The impact of for-profit hospital conversion on the community is varied. Some may see for-profit hospitals taking over not-for-profits as a blessing, others as a curse, but the facts don’t have much to lend either side. Studies conducted by the Boston University School of Public Health found that some for-profits dramatically increased care to the poor while others decreased it, sometimes as much as 40%. The study found that, on average, there were no long-lasting changes in care between the two types of hospitals, meaning a lot of worries communities have about for-profit health care could be unfounded.

We’ve had some interesting discussions on Facebook about the generation gap between nurses and how it can get in the way of teamwork as well as questions about the kinds of important things nursing school can’t teach. We love Janet Izzo’s newest article for Nursetogether.com, “The Responsibility of Mentorship” written to honor National Nurses Week.

Janet talks about how “each and every nurse is a teacher in one way or another” and that the one’s who were willing to share their expertise and experiences with her as a young nurse made a huge impact. She starts by saying,

“During Nurses Week 2011 let us rededicate ourselves as nurses who are passionate about what we do and passionate about the lives entrusted to us. With those lives, those patients we serve, we have experiences to share and stories to tell. That fact alone qualifies us and holds us responsible as educators and mentors to other nurses.”

Read the whole article on NurseTogether.com.

Jane Izzo was a guest on Nurse Talk and is the author of Hotel Hennepin, which chronicles her experiences working in a large county hospital in the heart of Minneapolis. The stories Janet relates in Hotel Hennepin are poignant, sad and hysterically funny, but all are amazingly true! Click the audio player below to listen to the show where Janet and her book were featured.

Read California Healthline’s roundup of last Wednesday’s successful vote on SB 810:

Friday, May 06, 2011

Senate Health Committee Moves Single-Payer Bill

by David Gorn
Many dozens of single-payer supporters crammed the Senate Committee on Health chambers on Wednesday for hearing on a bill that would set up a single-payer health system in California.
The supporters were respectful and emphatic as they all stepped, one by one, up to the microphone to voice their support for such a model. After all of the advocates took their turn and returned to their seats, Senate Health Committee Chair Ed Hernandez (D-West Covina) wanted to know if there were any more speakers, so he politely asked if there was anyone else in the audience who was in favor of the bill.
And a sea of hands went up, as nearly everyone in the audience spontaneously and quietly raised their hands.

That has been the history of single-payer legislation in California, with enthusiastic, almost fervid, support of it by many citizens and organizations in the state, but a tepid, almost embarrassed, reception by many lawmakers.

For the rest of the article: http://www.californiahealthline.org/capitol-desk/2011/5/senate-health-committee-moves-singlepayer-bill.aspx#ixzz1LcMwKKNT

Here’s how Wednesday’s vote on SB 810 broke down:

YES – Ed Hernandez, Elaine Alquist, Kevin de Leon, Mark DeSaulnier, Lois Wolk

NO – Joel Anderson, Sam Blakeslee, Tony Strickland

Sen. Michael Rubio – who had said last week that he was going to vote no on the bill – curiously, abstained. Was the insurance industry breathing down his neck? Rubio’s office had said the senator believes the federal Affordable Care Act is good enough to help Californians. But this “reform” was a huge giveaway to the insurance companies and keeps them and the whole for-profit system intact. The insurers know SB 810 would spell their doom. Only Sen. Rubio knows why he didn’t show up for that vote, but abstaining is just as bad as voting against. His constituents should give him an earful.

Despite overwhelming demand from the citizens of California for single payer, it’s frustrating to see so many of our legislators have to be dragged by their hair toward doing the right thing. Never mind that the United States is hopelessly out of step with the rest of the western world when it comes to healthcare delivery. And the ACA isn’t going change that. Only a comprehensive, not-for-profit universal healthcare system can. SB 810′s near death last week shows we have to be ever vigilant against the dark forces of the health insurance industry and their minions in the California Chamber of Commerce hell bent on digging their claws into many a politician.

Facing possible extinction for the first time in four years, the single payer bill SB 810 pulled through, passing the Senate Health Committee on Wednesday on a 5-3 vote, state Sen. Mark Leno’s office reported. Up until a couple of days ago, committee chair Sen. Ed Hernandez had been undecided, putting the bill in jeopardy. But intense pressure from single payer advocates across the state and a massive phone campaign finally secured a “yes” vote from Hernandez. In addition, hundreds of single payer supporters descended upon the Capitol in Sacramento to attend the hearing.

Leno’s office released the following statement after the vote:

“California is being overrun by out-of-control health care costs, which has a significant impact on the state budget, businesses and families,” said Senator Leno, D-San Francisco. “Our single payer plan not only guarantees universal coverage for all Californians, but also contains health care costs, which is essential to solving our state budget crisis in the long term.”

SB 810 creates a private-public partnership to provide every California resident medical, dental, vision, hospitalization and prescription drug benefits and allows patients to choose their own doctors and hospitals. This single payer, “Medicare for All” type of program works by pooling together the money that government, employers and individuals already spend on health care and putting it to better use by cutting out the for-profit middle man.

“We must continue to fight for healthcare for every Californian,” said DeAnn McEwen, President of the California Nurses Association and a nurse at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center. “Federal reform does not insure that all Californians will receive the care they need. President Obama noted that if states come up with a better plan, they could move forward. Californians deserve the best. Senate Bill 810 will provide every Californian with an excellent standard of care, improve health outcomes, and finally get healthcare costs under control.”

California currently spends $200 billion annually on a fragmented, inefficient health care system that wastes 30% of every dollar on administration. Under Senate Bill 810, that wasteful spending is eliminated. The bill creates no new spending, and in fact, studies show that the state would save $8 billion in the first year under this single-payer health care plan.

“Most doctors support a public-private partnership like Medicare, but with everybody covered, better benefits, and lower costs,” said Dr. Henry L. Abrons, president of Physicians for a National Health Program, California Chapter. “We need to spend our precious resources wisely. Federal reform won’t accomplish these things, but SB 810 will.”

“Health Care for All realizes that the only way to provide better health care for absolutely everyone, for less money than we’re now spending, and control rising costs, is to pass a bill like SB 810 and then make the necessary changes to finance it,” said Greg Brockbank, chair of Health Care for All, California. “We stand ready to do our part in making that happen, and then to help successfully implement it.”

SB 810 will now move forward to the Senate Appropriations Committee. It’s imperative that we keep calling and writing our legislators so we can get the bill through the entire Senate a fourth time, then on to the Assembly, and finally to Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk. Along with Vermont – which is poised to pass its own single payer bill – we have the chance to show the rest of the country that single payer works, and is the best and most fiscally responsible way to solve our healthcare crisis. Full care for all, for less!

To find your state Senator, click on this link. To find your Assemblymember, click this link.

Sylvia@californiaonecare.org

The California Nurses Association is reporting that State Sen. Ed Hernandez has decided to vote in favor of SB 810 at tomorrow’s Senate Health Committee hearing. Up until now, Hernandez, the committee’s chair, had been undecided. This is terrific news. Obviously, the efforts from single payer advocates around California urging voters to call his office helped him make up his mind. This bill needs to get out of committee to survive and reach the entire Senate floor.

To thank Sen. Hernandez, his contact information is below:

Ed Hernandez (District 24 – Los Angeles)

State Capitol, Room 4085, Sacramento, CA 95814 Telephone: (916) 651-4024; Fax: (916) 445-0485

Email: senator.hernandez@senate.ca.gov

149 South Mednik Avenue, Suite 202, Los Angeles, CA 90022 Telephone: (323) 881-0100

14403 E. Pacific Avenue, #327, Baldwin Park, CA 91706 Telephone: (626) 337-2760

However, State Sen. Michael Rubio is still leaning toward voting “no.” He believes the federal health reform law is good enough for Californians. He needs to hear from voters, especially his constituents who live in the Central Valley, that we can do better.

Michael Rubio (District 16 – Fresno, Kings, Tulare, Kern)

State Capitol, Room 2066, Sacramento, CA 95814 Telephone: (916) 651-4016; Fax: (916) 327-5989

Email: senator.rubio@senate.ca.gov
2550 Mariposa Hall, Suite 2016, Fresno, CA 93721 Telephone: (559) 264-3070

1800 30th Street, Suite 350, Bakersfield, CA 93301 Telephone: (661) 395-2620

Nurses and Supporters of Nurses
Join the Nurses of Tufts Medical Center and St. Vincent Hospital
As they Conduct a One-Day Strike for Safe Patient Care on May 6

WHEN:
National Nurses Day, Friday, May 6, 2011
Nurses at both hospitals begin their 24-hour strike at 6 a.m.

St. Vincent Nurses Plan Public Rally at 12 noon;
Tufts Medical Nurses will hold public rally at 4 p.m.
Supporters are welcome to join the picket line at any time.

WHERE:

Tufts Medical Center
750 Washington St., Boston

St. Vincent Hospital
23 Summer St., Worcester

The registered nurses of Tufts Medical Center and St. Vincent Hospital, who are represented by the Massachusetts Nurses Association, are both planning to hold a one-day strike on National Nurses Day, May 6, 2001 to protest dangerous patient care conditions at both facilities and to call for desperately needed improvements in RN staffing levels. This is a righteous struggle by frontline nurses to protect patients at a time when countless scientific studies clearly demonstrate that when nurses have excessive patient assignments, as is the case at these two hospitals, patients suffer a number of serious complications, are subject to longer hospital stays and experience preventable medical errors.

Tufts Medical Center and St. Vincent Hospital are the two of the worst staffed hospitals in their respective cities, which has resulted in the nurses’ filing more than 1,700 reports of unsafe situations at both facilities where patient care was compromised.

The nurses at both hospitals have been engaged in protracted negotiations for new union contracts, with the sticking point being the nurses’ calling for safe, enforceable staffing levels that would guarantee nurses safe patient assignments and would provide quality patient care.

We encourage all nurses, and those who support nurses, to join these courageous caregivers on their respective strike lines as they fight for the safety of their patients. Please note, while the nurses have called for a one-day strike, the management at both hospitals has stated their intent to lock the nurses out until at least May 11. If that occurs, the nurses will maintain their picket lines outside both facilities and would appreciate continued public support during that period.

Directions to Tufts Medical Center
Visit: http://www.bmc.org/patients/directions.htm

Directions to St. Vincent Hospital
Visit: http://www.stvincenthospital.com/contact/maps.aspx

From our friends at the Massachusetts Nurses Association and National Nurses United.

Pressure is building on two Democratic state Senators on the Senate Health Committee to get them to change their minds on the single payer health care bill, SB 810. The bill is scheduled for a hearing before the committee this Wednesday after being postponed from last week. Committee chairperson Sen. Ed Hernandez (Los Angeles) is publicly saying he has not decided how he will vote on the bill, while Sen. Michael Rubio (Fresno) has said he will vote “no.” If Hernandez also votes no, SB 810 will have died in the state Senate for the first time after having successfully passed the chamber the last three years. Last year, SB 810, sponsored by San Francisco-area state Sen. Mike Leno, passed the state Senate, but died in the Assembly.

The liberal grassroots advocacy group, Democracy for America, has sent out an alert to its membership calling on them to flood Hernandez and Rubio’s offices with phone calls:

“On Tuesday the Vermont Senate passed a bill that puts the Green Mountain State on the path to a single-payer health care system, and next week California’s Senate Health Committee has the same opportunity on May 4th. However, two Democratic senators could keep it from passing.

We’ve come too far for this bill to fail now. Can you call them and ask them to vote yes?

The Chair of the Health Committee, Senator Ed Hernandez, who voted for the single-payer bill as an Assemblymember is undecided. Call him now and tell him that a ‘yes’ vote is a vote for California’s future. Even if you don’t live in his district the stakes are too high and he needs to hear from you. You can reach his Sacramento office at: (916) 651-4024

After your call, click here to let us know if he’s decided how he will vote.

Newly elected Senator Michael Rubio represents the same district as former State Senate Majority Leader, Dean Florez, who co-sponsored the bill the last time it was introduced, but Senator Rubio says he will oppose this legislation. Can you call Senator Rubio right now and tell him that his constituents want a single-payer system? His Sacramento office number is: (916) 651-4016

Then let us know what his office says about how he will vote.

The California Democratic Party includes a single-payer plan in its platform. We are counting on these Democrats to vote with their party. California is counting on these Senators to vote the right way — it’s a moral imperative to provide Californians with the care they need.

Thanks for everything you do.

- Kaili

Kaili Lambe, Political Campaign Manager
Democracy for America”

Hernandez’s office wouldn’t say what would make him vote “yes.” According to Rubio’s office, the Senator thinks the federal Affordable Care Act is enough to solve California’s healthcare crisis. The truth is, unlike SB 810, the federal reform law won’t cover all Californians, and it won’t do enough to control costs. The ACA leaves in place the unsustainable profit-driven healthcare system, and will continue to burden taxpayers.

Rubio represents the same district as former state Senate Majority Leader, Dean Florez, who had been a co-sponsor of the bill when it was introduced. Hernandez’s wavering and Rubio’s brush off smell a lot like the work of insurance industry meddling.

Meanwhile, SB 810 got a much needed shout out at last weekend’s California Democratic Party State Convention in Sacramento. Sunday’s general session, which I attended, featured a parade of speeches by various state party officials. Then, California Democratic Council President Henry Vandermeir got to the podium and addressed the delegates with news that a longtime party activist had recently died because he didn’t have health insurance. (The CDC is a statewide association of Democratic clubs and party county committees.) Vandermeir next proceeded to chastise Hernandez and Rubio for potentially killing SB810, and urged the delegates – several hundred strong in the auditorium – to call the lawmakers and tell them to vote in favor of SB 810.

Single payer came up in several speeches during the two-day general session – most notably from keynote speaker, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones. But the fate of SB 810 was not mentioned until Vandermeir brought it up that Sunday afternoon. I didn’t see his heartfelt endorsement coming, so what a pleasant and most welcome surprise.

Sylvia@californiaonecare.org

It looks like California and Vermont could go on two different trajectories in America’s battle for healthcare equality. On Tuesday, the Vermont Senate approved by 21-9 health reform legislation that would create a single payer system in the state. Once the bill is reconciled by both chambers of the Vermont legislature, it will land on Gov. Peter Shumlin’s desk. Shumlin is a strong supporter of single payer.

Meanwhile, in our state of California, SB 810 could be in jeopardy. Wednesday’s scheduled hearing in the state Senate Health Committee was postponed to May 4. According to single payer advocacy group, Single Payer Central, two Democratic members on the committee – chairman Ed Hernandez and member Michael Rubio – are apparently wavering on the bill:

“The Senate Health Committee was scheduled to discuss SB 810 on Wednesday, April 27 at 1:30pm. The Health Committee meeting has now been postponed to Wednesday, May 4th at 1:30pm.

The vote on SB 810 is in jeopardy of not passing because of two members of the Health Committee, Democratic State Senators Michael Rubio from Bakersfield, who is not in support, and the Chair of the Health Committee, Ed Hernandez, who is not sure what he thinks.

Please call Senator Rubio and ask him what it would take for him to vote yes. Call his office every day through May 4th until he responds to your simple question.
His Sacramento phone is 916-651-4016 and his fax is 916-327-5989.
His Bakersfield phone is 661-395-2620 and his fax is 661-395-2620.

Please call Senator Hernandez, the chair of the Health Committee, ask him what it would take for him to vote yes. Call him every day through May 4th until he answers your question. He is clearly placing politics above people’s lives.
He voted for SB 810 last year when he was an Assembly Member!
His Sacramento phone is 916-651-4024 and his fax is 916-445-0485. His West Covina phone is 626-430-2499 and his fax is 626-430-2494.

When calling Rubio and Hernandez, they may ask you if you live in the district. Do not get thrown off by the question. The fact is they are going to vote on your healthcare and you deserve an answer why they will not vote for legislation that provides healthcare for everyone, saves Californians billions of dollars, allows you choice of provider, and stops the insurance companies from controlling your health care.”

If Hernandez and Rubio are having second thoughts about SB 810, it could be because they either feel the federal law is enough (which it isn’t), or the insurance industry is lurking around in the background. That’s why we have to act now. We must call our representatives, especially Hernandez and Rubio. We must burn up their phones. Click here for more detailed contact information for the state Legislature. California must join Vermont in moving toward healthcare equality.

Sylvia@californiaonecare.org

Is it Arizona’s Jan Brewer for eliminating state funding for low-income Medicaid patients in need of organ transplants? Or Ohio’s John Kasich, Ex-Lehman Bros. exec., whose anti-union law bars public employees from bargaining for healthcare, staffing levels, sick leave and much more? Well, spin the wheel and find out. Then, get involved to help make a few changes.

GRITtv: Mary Gerisch: Health Care as a Human RightVermont’s “Green Mountain Care”, if implemented, will be the U.S.’s first single-payer health care plan. Mary Gerisch explains why framing health care as a human right helped them win.

More GRITtv

So Blue Shield finally blinked. On Wednesday, the health insurer withdrew proposed rate increases of as much as 86.5% on individual policies. This hike would have been on top of increases Blue Shield imposed on its customers in January and October. From the Sacramento Bee:

“Blue Shield has withdrawn its rate filing with the California Department of Insurance and the company will not increase rates to any individual or family plan member for the remainder of the year,” said Blue Shield chairman and chief executive officer Bruce Bodaken, in a statement.

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/03/16/3480262/blue-shield-withdraws-disputed.html#ixzz1Gswwa9SKBlue Shield says it’s canceling the hikes because the company’s pay outs on medical claims has been less than expected. But I’d like to think massive public and political pressure, particularly from Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones, had a lot to do with it. [Nurse Talk likes to think our show with RN Cynthia Campbell helped too.] Nevertheless, Blue Shield says it won’t raise rates until at least next year, giving customers only a temporary reprieve.The only way we are going to stop Blue Shield and other insurance companies from constant price gouging is to relieve them of their business once and for all. More and more of our citizens are being forced to switch to cheaper, lower-quality insurance coverage, or drop coverage altogether because of rising premiums. This is road to nowhere. Basically, Californians have a choice: either we eliminate the insurance middlemen and establish SB 810’s public insurance program for all, or we don’t, and end up with a state where only the few and the wealthy get health care.Visit the Calfornia OneCare web site to learn more about California’s effort to pass single payer health care legislation. You can email Sylvia at Sylvia@californiaonecare.org and see the original blog post at http://californiaonecare.org/blue-shield-backs-off-rate-hikes-for-now/

The following article from the blog AlterNet shows how Cuba achieves virtually the same quality of health care as the United States, but at 96% less cost. What’s this country’s secret? An emphasis on preventive care. The results prove that this approach works better than America’s profit-driven “sickcare” industry:

“The Cuban approach to health care is so different that it cannot be described using the concepts that are so problematic in the US. It goes beyond taking profit out of medicine. Cuba’s system is not a perfect one (and indeed, the issues of government repression and poverty remain stark there) and yet it stands alone in constructing an advanced health care system with extremely limited resources.

What it has accomplished is remarkable. Life expectancy climbed from 58.8 years at the time of the 1959 revolution to 73.5 years by 1983 and 78 years currently. Cuba has eradicated polio, controlled malaria and dengue and decreased infant, child and maternal mortality to be roughly equal to rates in the US. Cuban medicine is widely recognized by international health groups such as UNICEF as surpassing that of developing countries and being comparable to developed ones.”

The foundation for the transformation is a commitment to health care as a human right. There is a strong connection between poverty and sickness. Better care is understood as interwoven with improvements in housing, education and employment.Read the entire article by clicking here. Using the sickcare system in the United States often feels like an ordeal. It’s because we insist on treating health care like a commodity to be bought and sold. But it doesn’t have to be that way. For Cubans, going to see the doctor is as simple as walking to the local market. Neighborhood clinics and house calls are the norm. Cuba’s commitment to primary care results in healthcare outcomes that are on par with developed countries. Cuba demonstrates that a healthcare system based on helping people is more efficient, more economical, and far superior than a sickcare system that supports greed.Sylvia Moore is a guest blogger representing California OneCare, Full Care For All, For Life, For Less.

On Wednesday, the House Republican majority made good on its dog and pony show of repealing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). All 242 Republicans in the chamber voted to repeal, along with three Democrats. Never mind that 129 million Americans would be denied health coverage because they have preexisting conditions, according to a report released by the Department of Health and Human Services.And never mind that these same congresspeople, who want to deny their constituents health coverage, receive gold-plated, government-sponsored coverage subsidized by their taxpaying constituents. Only a handful of congressional lawmakers have pledged to give up their own coverage. We should all find this sort of “healthcare hypocrisy” especially offensive.Rather than repealing the good parts of the healthcare law, Congress should make it better by expanding Medicare to everyone. This would eliminate the problem of preexisting conditions. It also doesn’t make sense to require everyone to buy insurance, while at the same time allowing insurance companies to charge as much as they want. Treating health care as a public service like police, fire protection, public education and libraries, would make the individual mandate unnecessary. During the debate on whether to repeal PPACA, Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio renewed his call to end profit-driven health care and to expand Medicare to everyone:Sylvia@californiaonecare.org

Our pal Deborah Burger, RN, is co-president of National Nurses United, the nation’s largest and fastest-growing union and professional association of RNs, with 160,000 members around the country. Healthcare reform? She’s written a great piece about what we need to do now.”It’s time to move on. Let’s end the fiction that the current law was a government takeover. Let’s stop replaying the fruitless debate of the past two years over the false issues the right loves to exploit.And let’s find ways to address the continuing health problems plaguing so many by working instead:To really reign in skyrocketing costs, that are primarily driven by the very same profiteering private companies whose executives are being paid so much, and guarantee healthcare for all Americans, best done by expanding the most cost effective, real universal program — it’s called Medicare — to cover everyone.”Get fired up (again). READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE at National Nurses United.

We love this. Take a look.A friend of the couple who founded Home Instead Senior Care, Mary Maxwell was asked to give the invocation at the company’s 2009 Convention. Initially it seemed like a normal prayer, but it soon took a very funny turn.

Here’s what Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has to say about single payer, in an interview published in The Times of India:

Why have you been pitching for a single payer system for health insurance rather than a system where several private companies compete?The US model of private health insurers has been proven inefficient and expensive. Insurance companies have a very strong incentive to do cream skimming. They make more money figuring out the high cost and low cost people. Rather than provide better healthcare at lower costs, insurance companies innovate at finding better ways of discrimination. They are inefficient because they are trying to figure out how to insure people who don’t need the cover and keep out people who need it. With many companies, they also need to spend on marketing and advertising. The incentives are all wrong and the transaction costs are very high and you have to give them a high profit. In health, social and private incentives are totally disparate. Competition does not work in healthcare especially in the health insurance market. Several countries like the UK, France and Sweden have a single payer system, differing only in the organisation of healthcare delivery. People in these countries have done much better than the US.

I wish more of our political leaders would listen to what experts like Stiglitz have to say. We’d be better off.

Following the adjournment of the President’s Deficit Commission, National Nurses United, the nation’s largest professional nurses’ union, called on Congress to fully scrap the deeply flawed recommendations of the panel’s co-chairs, and move forward with the urgent actions that will protect America’s nurses and working families.Such a plan would start with a new economic program to put people back to work, a point made more pressing by today’s latest disastrous employment numbers, extending benefits for the unemployed which puts immediate money into the economy, and genuinely cutting healthcare costs, by expanding Medicare to cover all Americans.“We need a plan for everyone, not just Wall Street, the banks, and their champions in Washington who seem to dominate the political debate,” said Deborah Burger, RN, co-chair of the 160,000-member NNU. “Congress and the White House should stop focusing on the agenda of Wall Street and financiers which mischaracterizes causes of the deficit – the Bush tax cuts, the endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the downturn in the economy – and advance the programs Americans need, such as stimulus spending.”“Nurses know that the ongoing explosion in healthcare costs is also a major source of the federal deficit, and the insecurity faced by millions of American families and patients,” said Burger. She noted a Los Angeles Times report today showing that costs of employer-sponsored health insurance has ballooned nearly 34 percent the past six years nationally, far surpassing income for most families.“Yet the health plan passed by Congress does little to solve this problem. The most effective way to control health costs is by expanding Medicare to cover all Americans and employ the tested methods of bulk purchasing of prescription drugs and global budgeting for hospital services. Already Medicare costs far less than the profit-driven private system, and universal Medicare would achieve even greater cost control,” said Burger.“The real reason other developed nations spend so much less on healthcare is because they don’t protect the wealth of insurance companies over the welfare of patients, and they have single-payer, Medicare-for-all-type systems in place.”“Congress would also show the leadership the American people need by extending jobless benefits, which puts money into the economy, creating jobs, and holding the line on tax cuts for middle- and low-income families, not the wealthiest who need it the least,” she said.Burger said nurses are pleased the unwarranted effort of the deficit committee to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits failed to get the needed votes. “Americans need more retirement security, especially in an economic crisis, not less.”

Tell Congress: Don’t Cut OUR Social Security and Medicare!Call your U.S. Senator today!Our friends at National Nurses United, the California Nurses Association and the Massachusetts Nurses Association ask us all to please remember to call Congress and the White House on Tuesday, November 30 to protect Social Security and Medicare.The co-chairs of a presidential commission are promoting a plan to cut the deficit at the expense of working people, seniors, widows, orphans, and people with disabilities. Don’t let them.Before the full commission even gets a chance to vote on the deal on Dec. 1, please join us in calling Congress and the White House.This plan would raise the retirement age, reduce benefits for middle-class workers, and cut COLAs after retirement – dramatically reducing benefits for the oldest retirees. It would also reduce Medicare to a voucher program. Don’t be mislead, these programs are currently on sound financial footing and are never allowed to contribute to the deficit.RNs can’t wait longer to retire when they are already overworked and are lifting an average of 1.8 tons a day. We can’t take any benefit cuts when employers continually try to reduce hard-earned pension benefits.”The proposal from the two chairmen of the ‘catfood commission’ makes no sense on its own terms,” says NNU Co-president Deborah Burger, RN. “Congresswoman Schakowsky’s proposal strengthens Social Security, taxes the wealthy, and invests in jobs.” Please make your voice heard now.What you can do:Join in Nov. 30, National Call-in Day to Congress. We want to flood Capitol Hill with thousands of calls, so please join, and call your senators and representative in Congress, 866-529-7630.Call the White House, 202-456-1414.Write a letter to your local newspaper. Follow this link to an online tool, which enables you in just a few clicks to locate and email your local newspapers. There are 10 sample letters that you are able to choose from, all of which can be customized.Tell them:* Protect Social Security. No cuts in benefits for RNs and other working people.* Strengthen Social Security. Raise the income ceiling on payroll taxes for a more equitable system.* No extension of the Bush tax cuts for the richest Americans.Download Call-in Day flyerDownload FAQ Flyer

If they ever hand out a prize for Hypocritical Freshman Congressperson of the Year, Andy Harris would win first place. In an amazing display of audacity, Harris, a Republican elected Nov. 2 to a Maryland congressional seat on an anti-healthcare reform platform, complained during an orientation meeting about having to wait 28 days before receiving the government-subsidized healthcare plan available to all federal employees. What’s even more incredible, is that Harris is an anesthesiologist. So one would think he would have some empathy for the millions of people who go without insurance much longer than a mere month.After the Politico story came out, Harris received a much deserved public trashing. He immediately tried to clarify his remarks, claiming he wasn’t talking about himself, but about federal employees in general. Nevertheless, Democratic Rep. Joe Crowley of New York was so incensed by Harris’ cluelessness, and anti-health reform legislators in general, that he is demanding that lawmakers who want to repeal reform should drop their own taxpayer-funded coverage. (So far, two lawmakers have taken Crowley up on his challenge)When the fight over healthcare reform took center stage in Congress last year, I kept wondering when someone would point out how ironic it is that millions of working-class taxpayers who don’t get health insurance on the job are subsidizing the health care of lawmakers who would deny health coverage to those same taxpayers. I always felt this was one of the most obscene characteristics of our broken healthcare system. Another New York Democrat, Rep. Anthony Weiner, did make an issue of this hypocrisy by identifying on his web site anti-reform legislators who are receiving Medicare.The question of fairness also came up at a town hall meeting in Iowa, when a member of the audience asked Republican Sen. Charles Grassley why he couldn’t get insurance coverage that’s as good as the Senator’s. Grassley gave a rather flip response, telling the constituent that all he had to do was apply for a government job and then he could get the same coverage. Never mind that not everyone can or wants to work for the government, nor can everyone run for political office.What is most shameful about Harris, Grassley and other lawmakers like them is that they have a sense of superiority and entitlement that compares with the attitudes of aristocrats from a bygone era. Their job is to serve the citizens, yet they seem to think that their positions of power give them the right to take from the public trough and provide little in return.Wealth inequality is at its widest than at any time since the Guilded Age of the early 20th century. Barriers to health care has become part of a 21st century class war. Unequal distribution of income begets unequal access to health care. This has a lot to do with the fact that life expectancy among low-income Americans has stagnated while that of the wealthiest Americans has increased.All federal legislators make a decent living, and many of them are quite wealthy. It is shocking that some of these legislators openly show their disdain for the less fortunate by blocking social benefits like health care, while at the same time having no problem with taking these same benefits for themselves. It is a moral outrage, and the public should no longer tolerate such behavior. Every American deserves the same high quality health care that members of the political class receive, and we should expand Medicare to achieve that.Sylvia@californiaonecare.org

The United States just reached a new milestone in the Hall of Shame: nearly 59 million Americans were uninsured for at least part of 2010, according to officials at the Centers for Disease Control. That’s more uninsured Americans than the entire populations of some industrialized countries that provide health care to all of their citizens. From a Reuters article:

They said 4 million more Americans went without insurance in the first part of 2010 than during the same time in 2008.“Both adults and kids lost private coverage over the past decade,” Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told a news briefing.The findings have implications for U.S. healthcare reform efforts. A bill passed in March promises to get health insurance coverage to 32 million Americans who currently lack coverage.But Republicans who just took control of the House of Representatives last week have vowed to derail the new law by cutting off the funds for it, and some want to repeal it. Experts from both sides predict gridlock in Congress for the next two years in implementing healthcare reform’s provisions.

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From our friends at National Nurses United:Nation’s Nurses Sharply Criticize Deficit Commission’s Bowles-Simpson Proposal for Unwarranted Attacks on Social Security and MedicareWashington Insiders Misreading Demands of American Public With Efforts to Undermine Retirement Security – Middle Class to Suffer If Bowles-Simpson Passes(Washington, D.C.)–Jean Ross, RN, co-president of National Nurses United, the nation’s union and professional association for registered nurses, issued the following statement on suggestions from Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, co-chairs of the Commission on the Deficit, that Social Security and Medicare be cut:”Nurses are aghast at the Commission on the Deficit’s Bowles-Simpson proposal for a cruel and senseless cut to the Social Security and Medicare programs that are the core of American retirement and healthcare security for tens of millions of people. This is just heartless at a time when the average Social Security benefit is already insufficient, especially for women, and for the millions of Americans who have seen their retirement savings lost in this Great Recession.” Read the complete release here.LESSONS LEARNED…One lesson that can be drawn from the election last week is that supporting Social Security and Medicare isn’t just the right thing to do, it will help members of Congress keep their seats. Only 15 of 140 members who signed a letter to the president pledging to vote against any cuts in these important programs lost their bid for re-election, and only one of eight senators who have signed on to a similar Senate resolution lost his seat.And yet, the news coming out of Washington this week is that the president’s Deficit Commission still plans to release a report in the near future recommending that the lame-duck Congress hastily pass deficit-reduction legislation that could slash these critical programs, because they decided this election meant that voters want austerity. Wrong. The reality is that people are unemployed and underemployed and the economy hasn’t improved quickly enough.That’s why they need to hear from bedside nurses from all over the country that Social Security isn’t broke, so they better not try to fix it in the context of this commission.TAKE ACTION…Call your member of Congress and tell them to vote against cuts in Medicare or Social Security, and ask your senators to sign on to S. Res. 664 to affirm that we don’t need to cut these programs to deal with the deficit, since they don’t have anything to do with the deficit. Enter your zip code here to contact your representative today.For more information, the Center on Economic Policy Research released a report recently about the need to keep these programs intact.In solidarity,National Nurses United888 16th Street, NW #640Washington, DC 20006www.NationalNursesUnited.orgRepresenting 156,000 registered nurses from all 50 states, National Nurses United is the voice of the registered nurse movement.

By Nita DollieslagerDaytona Beach News-JournalOctober 18, 2010I am a registered nurse working in this community. I am also part of the legislative efforts led by the National Nurses Organizing Committee of Florida. I support the Florida Hospital Patient Protection Act (known as HB 1283/SB 2316 in the 2010 legislative session) and ask that all residents of this community support it too.Research shows that increasing the number of full-time registered nurses on staff per day by just one resulted in 9 percent fewer hospital-related deaths in ICUs, 16 percent fewer in surgical patients and 6 percent fewer in medical patients (as reported in Healthcare Risk Management, Feb. 2008). Safe staffing ratios also help lower the incidence of some of the most-serious health issues facing seniors: pneumonia, stroke and hospital-acquired infections, to name a few.According to a Robert Wood Johnson study done in 2006, increasing the ratio of R.N.s to patients doesn’t just protect patient care and save lives, it results in a net decrease in cost to the hospital because of improved patient outcomes and reduced length of stay for the patient. It’s good for the economy overall.Reducing the number of patients and increasing our ability as nurses to advocate in the patient’s interest is the right thing to do. I hope that the residents of this community will support our efforts to pass the Florida Hospital Patient Protection Act.In a study done by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality in May 2007, it was learned that, for each additional patient assigned to a registered nurse, the risk of death for each patient increases by 7 percent. The latest study published by Health Research and Educational Trust shows that the law in California that mandates R.N.-to-patient ratios did the job asked of it — it saved lives in California. The hospital nurses in California care for fewer patients than other states, and mortality is lower. One has to ask: Why should we not save lives in Florida as well?

According the the BBC, “The US healthcare system is to blame for declines in the country’s life expectancy ranking, a study suggests.The Columbia University report rejects claims that factors such as obesity have shortened life-spans for Americans relative to other wealthy nations.The study blames reliance on costly and fragmented specialised care, and calls for systemic reform.Its release comes as President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform remains a key issue in upcoming mid-term elections.”Read the whole report at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11502938Then get ready to vote!

By Jack ChangSacramento BeeSeptember 7, 2010Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman was leading a triumphant rally at the state GOP convention last month when she announced that New Yorkers were excited about the California governor’s race.At a fundraiser she held in New York, Whitman said she met with people who “have suffered the financial reforms that are going to crimp our ability to raise capital, and they want California to turn the corner.”Whitman’s Democratic rival, Jerry Brown, and his supporters pounced on the remark, saying it proved that “Wall Street Whitman” was looking out more for captains of industry than the average Californian toughing out the recession.Democrats have long accused Republicans of being beholden to big business, but the rhetoric is extra loud this year because Whitman, the former CEO of online auction firm eBay, claims longtime ties to the nation’s financial sector.She made more than $1 billion, largely from eBay stock, and spent more than a year on the board of investment bank Goldman Sachs, for which she received $475,000 in stock and options.Now the financial industry has lined up behind her gubernatorial campaign.According to a Bee estimate, investment banks and firms, private investors, financial advisers, venture capitalists and even the chairman of the Federal Reserve in San Francisco have poured $4.7 million into her effort, more than a fifth of total outside contributions she’s received. Whitman has also given her campaign $104 million of her own money.The industry has been less generous to Brown, who has received about $1 million from the sector.As Whitman hinted during the state GOP convention, she’s held fundraisers in New York, Chicago, California and elsewhere attended by finance industry leaders.Mill Neck, N.Y.-based hedge fund manager David Knott said many in the business world see Whitman as an ally who appreciates the burdens government places on companies. Last week, the California Chamber of Commerce officially endorsed Whitman for governor.Knott, a frequent Republican donor, gave $25,900 to the Whitman campaign and said he attended a lunch in New York City earlier this summer where Whitman spoke to supporters.”She understands what turns people on in the business world when it comes to locating a plant or doing business in the state,” Knott said. “You need some return to fiscal sanity, and Meg Whitman has run eBay. She knows what the problems are.”Whitman has trumpeted her time working for industry giants such as the consultancy Bain & Co. and has staked out positions friendly to the sector.She’s called for elimination of the state capital gains tax, which would provide a boon for Californians with lucrative investment portfolios. She’s also criticized the financial regulation overhaul passed by Congress and made streamlining government regulations on businesses a central part of her job creation agenda.Her spokesman Darrel Ng pointed out that while investors are supporting Whitman, the unions have spent millions supporting Brown. The Bee estimates that Brown has received $4.2 million from labor organizations. Unions have also funded independent expenditure committees that have spent more than $10 million, mostly on ads targeting Whitman.”One hundred percent of the money spent on advertising in support of Jerry Brown thus far has come from unions. We know that they will expect a healthy return on their investment,” Ng said.”On the other hand, less than 3 percent of the total contributions to Meg Whitman’s campaign have come from what The Bee has defined as Wall Street. Those who contribute to Meg support her because they know she is the only candidate with a plan to create 2 million jobs in the next five years and return California to prosperity.”The risk of being tarred as a finance industry lackey is high this year, as many continue to blame Wall Street misdeeds for persistently high unemployment and foreclosure rates.During the Republican primary, Whitman saw her poll numbers plummet when rival Steve Poizner aired TV ads highlighting her ties to Goldman Sachs.”Jerry Brown needs to prime that anger” to win, said University of California, San Diego, political science professor Thad Kousser. “Their goal is to make sure every voter associates Meg Whitman not with Silicon Valley and eBay but with Wall Street and Goldman Sachs.”Brown has, in fact, slammed Whitman’s financial industry ties while blaming Wall Street for sinking the country into recession.”She wants to put everyone into the loving embrace of Wall Street,” Brown said at a Service Employees International Union meeting in March. “That’s how she got her billion. And she thinks it might work for everybody else. I don’t believe that.”Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., has taken the same tack with her Republican rival Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of tech giant Hewlett-Packard. During their debate Wednesday, Boxer repeatedly equated Fiorina with Wall Street while chiding her for sending Hewlett-Packard jobs overseas.Richard Rock, a former eBay vice president who’s now an investment adviser, said he’s backing Whitman because he believes she’ll restore predictability to what’s been a topsy-turvy state business climate.Rock has given the campaign $30,900 and said he attended a Silicon Valley fundraiser with Whitman and other former eBay employees.”What we’re looking for more than anything is certainty on how we’re going to move forward, and there’s so much uncertainty now,” Rock said. “We’re interested in having trust that who’s in the governor’s office has a fair vision of business.”

By Juliet WilliamsAssociated PressAugust 27, 2010Hundreds of union members celebrating the 90th anniversary of women’s suffrage rallied Thursday at the state Capitol, holding signs that said “Women vote for women who vote” an attack on the state’s first female Republican nominee for governor.The signs were criticizing the abysmal voting record of former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman, who has acknowledged that she failed to vote for most of her adult life. The rally was organized by the California Nurses Association, a vocal Whitman critic.Many marchers wore wide-brimmed hats adorned with flowers, long skirts and high necklines, in reference to the attire of the era of suffragettes. While some speeches focused on the struggles women went through to secure the passage of the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, other speakers touched on a modern political issue: the upcoming November election.A group of California Teachers Association members chanted “Teachers vote without fail, California’s not for sale.”Whitman, a billionaire businesswoman, has contributed $104 million to her campaign to date, breaking all previous state spending records.At a campaign event Thursday in the City of Industry, Whitman called the rally a distraction from the most pressing issues facing the state.”That is the union bosses trying to distract from the fact that I will go to Sacramento and I will change Sacramento,” she said. “I will get the public pension under control. I will fix our K-12 education system. So in my view, my voting record isn’t perfect, but the main issue here is how are we going to turn California around, and I think I have a plan.”Whitman has been a vocal critic of public employee unions, which largely support her Democratic challenger, state Attorney General Jerry Brown. He re-emerged on the campaign trail this week after a quiet summer spent fundraising for a costly campaign this fall.The California Nurses Association has held rallies around the state with a colorful “Queen Meg” character who proclaims she would like to buy the state. Whitman has responded in kind, skewering the union in mailers sent to some nurses’ homes calling out executive director Rose Ann DeMoro’s $293,000 annual salary.Whitman says she supports the group’s signature issue upholding the California law that requires hospitals to have at least one nurse for every five patients. The CNA successfully lobbied for the law.But Jan McDermott, 63, a postpartum nurse from San Francisco, said she doesn’t believe Whitman would uphold the law or other patient safety protections.”She’s apparently anti-union. And anything we’ve won, we won through the union,” said McDermott.Associated Press Writer John Rogers in City of Industry also contributed to this report.

By Seema MehtaLos Angeles TimesAugust 10, 2010An open letter from a group of progressive experts finds the Republican’s policies if implemented would deepen the budget crisis, raise unemployment and cut growth.Meg Whitman’s economic policies are based on a flawed understanding of the challenges California faces, and the Republican gubernatorial nominee’s proposals would make the state’s troubles worse, according to an open letter to Californians signed by a group of mostly Democratic economists from throughout the state.”The evidence and theory that Whitman uses to diagnose California’s problems are unscientific and an unsound basis for policy,” the economists write. “As a result, her diagnosis and her proposed economic policies are both deeply flawed. If implemented, her policy proposals will deepen California’s budget crisis and are likely to reduce employment and economic growth.”The letter and an 18-page report detailing their findings will be released Tuesday by the advocacy arm of the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning nonprofit think tank in Washington. The professors who signed the letter are well regarded in their fields and include Kenneth Arrow, a Stanford University economist and Nobel laureate.Whitman’s supporters said the report was tainted by partisanship.”The same people who are engineering our nation’s blundering economic recovery are now criticizing candidates who are committed to balancing budgets through spending cuts, targeted tax relief and job creation,” said Crystal Feldman, spokeswoman for the California Republican Party. “If these guys were so smart, maybe unemployment wouldn’t be at 9.5% and our national deficit wouldn’t have ballooned to over $13.3 trillion.”A spokeswoman for Whitman declined comment.The study, written by UC Berkeley economist Michael Reich, analyzes the 48-page policy booklet Whitman unveiled during the primary campaign. Reich said he saw the book and instantly noticed statements that he knew were inaccurate, so he rounded up fellow economists who were willing to scrutinize it.”She claims to have a plan that’s very detailed and based on careful research. But it really isn’t careful at all, and it’s misguided,” Reich said. “It has a lot of incorrect assumptions. A lot of studies she draws on are useless or kind of misleading and don’t agree with well-accepted economic research…. They’re making promises that cannot be fulfilled.”Reich said Whitman’s Democratic rival, Jerry Brown, had released too few policy documents to conduct a similar review, and he hopes to complete an assessment once Brown announces more plans.Whitman has said California is suffering because its residents are overtaxed, businesses are over-regulated and the state’s bureaucracy is bloated.Reich writes that each of those suppositions is not based on fact and that Whitman relies on suspect science to overstate the problems. The study and the letter quote two economists who say that one of the studies she cites is “schlock science.”For instance, in saying that California has nearly the worst tax climate of any state in the United States, Whitman relies on a study that looked at the state’s highest income d failed to consider its property taxes, which tend to be lower than in other places.When property levies are included, California’s overall taxes are slightly higher than the average for all states, and during recessionary times, state taxes are lower than average, he writes.Whitman fails to understand that the real foundation of the state’s problems are the national economic downturn, the housing bubble’s burst, which hit California particularly hard, and the lack of a state “rainy day” fund that can be used during downturns, Reich writes.Reich takes issue with many of her proposals to improve the state’s economic viability.The swollen size of state government is a favorite talking point for the candidate, and she has pledged to reduce its ranks by 40,000 workers.Reich writes that California ranks 48th out of the 50 states in the number of employees compared to population. Her plans to trim the state workforce exclude the University of California system, prison guards and police. That means the other areas — education, health, foster care, and the Department of Motor Vehicles — would see one-quarter of their ranks cut, resulting in severe tolls on state services that directly affect Californians’ lives.He says Whitman’s proposal to deal with the state’s $20-billion budget deficit could do the same. The candidate proposes cutting $15 billion from the budget in her first year in office and reducing taxes by billions of dollars.”Alas, these numbers do not add up to $20 billion,” he writes. “And her plan does not specify where most of the cuts will fall.”Since most of the state’s general fund is spent on K-12 schools, higher education, health and human services and prisons, Reich writes that much of the cost-cutting must occur in those areas. He argues that such cuts not only would harm the state’s economic recovery and reduce federal matching funds but also would harm the state’s long-term productivity.”Cuts in these programs will therefore reduce the state’s potential to grow in the future,” he writes.

SAVE THE DATE: Thursday, August 26, 2010Sacramento, CaliforniaA Celebration of the 90th Anniversary of  Women’s Suffrage and a Protest of Meg Whitman Whose Voting Record Dishonors that Tradition

“I was not as engaged in the political process [voting]as I should have been. I was doing lots of otherthings…building companies [and laying off workers].”

— Meg Whitman, March 15, 2010

Join our special celebration of a woman’s Right to Vote and protest billionaire CEO Meg Whitman’s record of rarely voting for nearly three decades — except now that she is on the ballot.  Join Us — Thursday, August 26, SacramentoHop on board to join us for a very special celebration of the 90th anniversary of the 19th Amendment legalizing the right of women to vote in the U.S.  Thousands of women, and men, fought for decades to secure this basic democratic right.On August 26, we will honor the achievements of the suffrage movement, and the women who were imprisoned and abused in the fight. We will also continue our protest of Meg Whitman, who has disgraced the suffragists’ legacy, and now thinks she is entitled to be governor because of her wealth and privilege as a billionaire corporate CEO.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Gather for March3:00 pmConvention Center, Sacramento

March and Rally4:00 – 6:00 pmCapitol West Steps, SacramentoJoin us for this special occasion. Hosted by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United with other community and labor organizations. You’re encouraged to wear historic clothing of the era or black and white attire. Friends and family are invited to join the march and rally. Celebrate the 90th Anniversary of the 19th AmendmentFor more information and to RSVP, please contact Bonnie Castillo, RN or Deanna Furman (916) 446-5019 Download a PDF of the flyer to print or email to share with your friends.

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Amidst the nation’s worst economic recession since the Great Depression, and continuing problems in California with health care, education funding, home foreclosures, and lack of jobs, how do you explain the obscene and wasteful spending by candidate Meg Whitman in her campaign to buy the governor’s office. By The California Nurses AssociationAccording to campaign finance reports filed yesterday, Whitman has spent $99.7 million the past two years, a figure that the Associated Press notes climbs to $100.3 million when including donated services.Those numbers, which shatter campaign spending records in California and believed to exceed the amount any candidate running for any office in the U.S. other than President has spent, signal a campaign that is out of control and that shows little regard for the real life of most Californians.With more than 2.2 million Californians are out of work (Employment Development Department, July 16, 2010), at least 6.4 million are uninsured (U.S. Census Bureau as of 2007), and California ranks 41st in the U.S. in per capita spending per pupil (National Education Association rankings), such massive resources could surely be put to better use.Those are just three of the many signs of crisis in California that show the appalling contrast with the disgraceful spending spree by one billionaire candidate who seems to be driven by personal ambition and little else.If Whitman, whose main qualification for office appears to be her unlimited wealth, really wants to help the state, there are many other ways she could use those resources to add real social value to our state, and help Californians who are hurting, who are sick, or to bolster our education system.(And her profligate spending is another reminder of why we have characterized Whitman as “Queen Meg.” You can check out the latest on Queen Meg at www.QueenMeg2010.com.)The California Nurses Association, with its research arm, the Institute for Health and Socio-Economic Policy, has some suggestions.Here’s what Whitman’s $100 million could done:• Pay monthly unemployment benefits for 82,237 unemployed Californians. (Average unemployment benefit in California is $1,216) Source: Orange County Register, July 19, 2010• Pay the unemployment benefits for two months for the 40,000 workers she would lay off. (The U.S. Department of Labor calculates that by its broadest measure, the U-6 rate which is defined as total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, California has the highest unemployment rate in the nation, 21.9%.)• Pay yearly health insurance premiums for 7,477 families. (Average yearly health insurance for family coverage $13,375) Source: Employer Health Benefits, Annual Survey 2009, Kaiser Family Foundation• Fund 18,018 students at the Pell Grant maximum. (Pell Grant maximum for school year 2010-2011 is $5,550.) Source: United States Department of Education.• Pay for 11,447 pupils in California K-12. (Average expenditure per pupil in 2008-2009 school year was $8,736) Source:California Department of Education• Pay the “fees” for 10,770 students to attend one of the University of California campuses for academic year 2009-2010. (Fees to attend UC are $9,285.) Source: University of California, Fees and Financial Aid• By our calculations, help as many as 5,714 households avoid foreclosure The California Housing Finance Agency, the state’s affordable housing bank, estimates it will help 40,000 or more households avoid foreclosure with principal write downs and other plans unveiled Wednesday. In all, the agency received $700 million for the relief programs. Source: James Wasserman, “California to help pay down homeowners’ mortgage debt.” Four out of the Top ten cities for housing foreclosures are in the Central Valley. Source: Realty Trac.o Modesto is ranked second in the nation with 5,138 homes or 2.93 percent of all housing units in foreclosure in the first quartero Stockton is ranked fifth, with 6,327 homes in foreclosure, or 2.77 percent of the city’s homes.o Merced is sixth. It had 2,307 homes in foreclosure in Q1 or 2.76 of all homes.o And Bakersfield is ninth in the nation, with 6,343 homes in foreclosure or 2.33 percent of all housing units]• Hire as many as 1,755 new grad RNs in California for a year. Source: United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2008 Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates

The California Nurses Association put this together for you.Like your hospital CEO or Chief Nursing Officer, billionaire Meg Whitman thinks she knows what is best for California nurses and patients.So, after CNA refused Whitman’s demand that we give her every CNA member’s home address and other personal information — and after Whitman rejected our offer to have her speak directly to RNs in forums where nurses could ask unscripted questions — Whitman decided to bombard RNs with campaign mailings, and a misleading phone survey to nurses. And, she created a website to attack CNA, and the gains RNs have made, just as hospital attorneys and anti-union consultants have done before her. Don’t be deceived.Whitman poses a threat to our patients, our standards, and our voice.1) Protect Our Patients and Our Ratios. In the primary, Whitman wouldn’t support our ratios. Now, when she wants our votes in November, she claims she does. Gov. Schwarzenegger said he supported ratios, too. Then he issued an executive order to roll back the ratios, and severely weakened ratio enforcement by the Department of Public Health. Can we trust Whitman, who employs the same anti-regulation rhetoric and whose campaign chair, ex-Gov. Pete Wilson vetoed a prior ratio bill, not to follow in Schwarzenegger’s footsteps?2)Protect Our Pensions. Whitman denounces “gold-plated retirement benefits” of UC and other public nurses, and says she will raise the retirement age, extend vesting periods, require RNs to contribute more to pension plans, and replace defined benefit plans with more risky 401(k) plans. We can not allow Whitman to seek to divide RNs. Her plan to cut public RN retirement will only encourage all hospital employers to demand huge cuts in the pension and retiree health benefits all California RNs have worked so hard to win.3) Protect Meal Breaks and Overtime. Whitman wants to eliminate guaranteed meal and rest break laws and overtime pay. If she succeeds every employer will be demanding more mandatory overtime and abusing break relief.4) Protect the Public’s Health. Whitman wants a “moratorium” on all new consumer requirements, including workplace health and safety rules and consumer protections against polluted air, water and food toxins. Whitman also will continue to cut funding for California’s public health safety net, which impacts the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in our society, especially children.5) Protect Our Union. Whitman’s assault on CNA could have been scripted by hospital management, and is intended to silence nurses by weakening our collective ability to fight to improve patient care and RN standards, and to protect our voice at the bedside and in the public arena.

Download the PDF from the California Nurses Association

By Doron TsurHaaretzJuly 28, 2010Meg Whitman is a household name, at least among households with habitual readers of the business press, especially those who invest in technology stocks. She is the near-legendary manager of the Internet giant eBay. Under her stewardship eBay grew from a kicky startup Web site where people could sell and buy stuff, but which made no income to speak of, into the stellar success it is today.Whitman’s resume is fairly typical for a top American manager. She’s a graduate of Harvard Business School. Her career stops include a stint as senior vice president at Disney Consumer Products, CEO of Florists Transworld Delivery and head of Hasbro’s Preschool Division, where she managed Playskool and Mr. Potato Head. Then, in 1998, she came to eBay.And for years she served as a director on Goldman Sachs’ board. During that period she, like other directors, won priority to participate in offerings the investment bank led, on which she made a pretty penny.Upon leaving the management of eBay in January 2008 (though she remained on the board another year ), having made a fortune from generous pay and a massive exercising of stock options, Whitman turned to politics. Now she is running in the California governor’s race, which will be decided in November.While Whitman is a household name, not many have heard of Rose Ann DeMoro. Nor is the organization she heads, the California Nurses Association, as well known around the world as eBay.DeMoro is not a nurse by trade. Her career track is very different from Whitman’s. Her career stops include working as a cashier in St Louis and mainly, political activity in trade unions.Yet the careers of the two women are on collision track because of Whitman’s plans for California.Whitman, who stands a good chance of winning the November poll, plans to slash California’s budget, which is in no better shape than Greece’s. Most of the cut will be in public-sector wages and pensions. That will affect people such as policemen, teachers, firemen – and nurses – the ones led by the indefatigable DeMoro.Getting personalUnder DeMoro’s stewardship, California’s nurses have begun a well-publicized campaign in which they call the candidate “Queen Meg” and portray her as a callous billionaire detached from the lives of ordinary folk. They depict her as someone using her fortune to buy power – Whitman is expected to spend about $150 million of her own money on the campaign.The claws are out. Nurses demonstrate outside Whitman’s home and have thrown their support behind the Democratic candidate Jerry Brown. Their attacks have also taken a personal nature.Whitman’s campaign isn’t sitting there and taking it: The attacks on DeMoro have also taken a personal bent, revealing her pay, which is a lot higher than the average pay nurses make.Whitman’s people are constantly driving home that DeMoro isn’t a nurse to begin with.In general, the campaign for Whitman, a Republican, tries to distinguish between public servants, who are cherished, and trade union leaders, who are not. It’s a classic divide-and-rule tactic.The clash between Whitman and DeMoro has all the earmarks of a good story: The polarity of the warriors, each representing a totally different agenda; their differences in style and appearance; and the fact that things have turned personal. The stage is set for drama.Candidate Whitman wears suits and comes armed with a tightly focused economic plan based on steep spending cuts. Her ammunition is a Harvard-style accurate list of the tough steps that need to be taken to save California’s budget. Labor leader DeMoro has her picture taken in union T-shirts. She waves placards, not lists, and delivers her speeches through a megaphone outside Whitman’s house. She tells stories of people’s lives, not numbers and economic data.I don’t know who will win the gubernatorial race, or which of the two poles will prevail. But the story of the California race is the same story unfolding just about everywhere else in the world, and investors would do well to watch not only the indexes, but this race very closely.This is not just another story of another local election. The nurses versus Queen Meg represents the growing gap in society, in America and elsewhere. On the one hand you have the high-tech and finance royalty, the white-collar people and businessmen, who are Whitman’s natural constituency. They support balanced budgets and tax cuts.On the other hand you have public servants and blue-collar workers, whose pay and living standards have been steadily eroding.It is the perennial battle over the distribution of the pie, and when the pie has been shrinking, as it has been these days, the fight turns bloody.The cutbacks reach the public sectorSince the global economic crisis began two years ago, the business and consumer sectors in America have been shrinking, while cutting back spending and investment. The number of employees has tumbled.But the increase in unemployment and wage erosion have been confined to the business sector. Until now the public sector has been immune, at both the federal and state levels. If anything, the public sector increased spending to stimulate the economy and alleviate the symptoms of the recession.If Whitman is elected, all this is likely to change. She has said 40,000 jobs will be cut from the public sector, and the remaining employees will face wage cuts. Other states are likely to follow suit, including New Jersey, Illinois and Michigan.If that happens, the United States will be in a strange situation. At the national level, the federal government is adopting Keynesian strategies of spending more and more, increasing its deficit and striving to preserve jobs. But at the state level, governments will do the opposite, adopting a pattern spreading in Europe – tightening their belts and reducing their deficits, despite the danger of a short-term jump in unemployment.Economists are watching these opposite directions in America and Europe: deficit spending versus discipline. Those two opposing approaches are now arising in America itself: proponents of increasing the deficit versus proponents of budgetary conservatism. It is internal strife that will only get worse as November approaches and the voters have their say.The writer is the CEO of Psagot Compass.

By Kevin O’LearyTIMEJuly 20, 2010In her gubernatorial campaign, California billionaire Meg Whitman fancies herself a turnaround artist, not unlike CEOs who take on failing companies and put them in the black. In her analysis of why the nation’s most populous state and the world’s 12th largest economy has a chronically dysfunctional government, one villain stands out: public-employee unions.The former eBay CEO promises she will cut the state-government payroll by 40,000 jobs. She says she can do this because, as a self-funded candidate willing to spend a mind-boggling $150 million of her own money, she will take office owing the unions and other special interests no favors. Whitman has declared, “I am tough enough to stand up to the unions and the politicians they control.” Republican consultant Kevin Spillane says it is an open secret in Sacramento that public-employee pensions, benefits and pay are not sustainable at current levels. “Given the severity of the recession,” Spillane tells TIME, “it is both politically possible and financially necessary for compensation and pensions to be reformed.”(Read “Is California sold on Meg Whitman?”)The unions, of course, have taken notice of Whitman’s attack and are fighting back. Led by the feisty California Nurses Association (CNA), they are challenging Whitman on the campaign trail and backing the candidacy of Democrat Jerry Brown. And so in one corner, the nurses engage in street theater that entertains and provokes as they take on Whitman. In the other is the candidate who has spent an astonishing $91 million thus far, hiring the best political consultants money can buy. “Californians love nurses, teachers and firefighters, but they hate the unions that these folks belong to,” says Jack Pitney, a professor at Claremont McKenna College and a former GOP official. “If it’s Meg vs. nurses, teachers and firefighters, she loses. [But] if it’s Meg vs. the union bosses, she wins.” (For now, the frugal Brown is neck and neck with Whitman in the polls, even though he has spent all of $500,000.)In satire meant to resonate with people suffering in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, the nurses’ union has shadowed Whitman at campaign events with an actress dressed as “Queen Meg.” Nurses leader Rose Ann DeMoro says the parody campaign, complete with a bus and supporting actors, mocks Whitman’s “assumption that her vast personal wealth of $1.3 billion and record spending in the Republican primary entitles her to be anointed governor and carry out her corporate agenda of eroding public and workplace protections, slashing safety-net programs and muffling the voice of working people and their unions.”(See why California is still America’s future.)Last week, as Whitman campaigned in Southern California, more than 1,000 unionized nurses wearing red hospital scrubs held a rally outside her home in Atherton, a leafy enclave of Silicon Valley’s rich and powerful. Wearing a blue gown and gold crown, Queen Meg was accompanied by two assistants wearing tuxedos with sashes of “Goldman” and “Sachs,” in reference to Whitman’s time on the reviled investment bank’s board of directors. “We are not going to let Meg Whitman push us around,” said Margie Keenan, a nurse from Long Beach, addressing the crowd. “We are here to push back and defend our state.” The Whitman campaign shot back with a statement by retired nurse Alice Hansen: “The radical leadership of this union does not represent the vast majority of California nurses.”On the spreadsheet, public-employee unions would seem a ripe target for cost-conscious politicians. Across the nation, many state and local government workers are able to retire earlier than their private-sector counterparts and enjoy generous benefits including pensions. But flesh-and-blood public servants — nurses, schoolteachers, firefighters and highway-patrol officers — perform essential functions. When public coffers run so dry that the police department no longer answers nonemergency calls — as was announced by crime-ridden Oakland recently when it laid off 80 police officers — public-sector pain affects the community at large.(Comment on this story.)Only a small percentage of CNA’s 85,000 nurses work for the state, but budget cuts and furloughs affect the state agencies on which the nurses depend. CNA spokesman Chuck Idelson gives this example: In November, the union filed a detailed complaint about conditions at UC Davis Medical Center with the California Department of Public Health. Idelson says, “As of mid-June, the department had still not assigned an investigator to the case.”Whitman says she wants to “downsize or rightsize” Sacramento and take the state’s payroll back to what it was five years ago. At that time, Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was in his first term. The Terminator came to office promising to curb the power of the unions but met his match when his ballot initiatives, designed to reform California’s government in a sharply conservative direction, were decisively defeated at the polls. The countercampaign was smart and irresistible. In the run-up to the vote, Schwarzenegger’s nemesis on television was a petite Asian-American schoolteacher castigating the governor for turning against the public schools.The Whitman team is trying to avoid the Goliath-vs.-David trap Schwarzenegger fell into. “Meg is trying to differentiate between the leaders and the profession,” says former Republican consultant Allan Hoffenblum. “She is going after the union leaders while saying, ‘I love nurses.’ It will be interesting if this works.” Gale Kaufman, a Democratic strategist who led the coalition that derailed Schwarzenegger’s conservative agenda, is skeptical. “Whitman has shown little understanding of what public employees do except in the broadest strokes.”Last month, Schwarzenegger convinced six of the state’s public-employee unions to agree to pension concessions and pay cutbacks. If the state’s other public-employee unions made similar deals, it would save the general fund $1.2 billion and help close California’s $19.1 billion deficit. Whoever is sworn into office in January — be it Whitman or Brown — will have to take up the laborious task of getting the unions to agree to cutbacks.

Nurses rally outside home of GOP nominee Whitman

By Nardine SaadAssociated PressJuly 15, 2010Atherton, Calif. (AP)–Hundreds of unionized nurses wearing scrubs held a raucous rally Thursday outside the Silicon Valley home of GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman to protest her proposals for the state, which they say will hurt working people.Dozens of police officers descended on the leafy streets surrounding Whitman’s two-story colonial home in Atherton. An estimated 1,100 protesters chanted “We’re going to beat back the Whitman attack” as an airplane paid for by the nurses union circled overhead, trailing a banner that read, “Nurses say no to Whitman.”The colorful display was part of an escalating feud between Whitman and California Nurses Association, the 85,000-member union that has trailed the former eBay CEO at her campaign events with an actress dressed as “Queen Meg.” The union says Whitman, a billionaire who has never before run for public office, is trying to buy the governor’s race by spending tens of millions of dollars from her personal fortune.The “Queen Meg” character made an appearance Thursday, standing in front of Whitman’s white picket fence surrounded by two tuxedo-wearing bodyguards with sashes identifying them as “Goldman” and “Sachs.” It was a reference to Whitman’s time serving on the Goldman board, during which she was paid $475,000, and criticism that she benefited from a questionable practice in which executives whose companies did business with Goldman were given preferential access to stocks.”Queen Meg” acted out a scene in which she pushed a woman dressed as California to the ground, saying she would eliminate public employees and give tax breaks to the wealthy. It was a play on a recent report that Whitman agreed to a confidential settlement while she was chief executive of eBay after she instigated an altercation with an employee.Whitman also has proposed eliminated 40,000 state government jobs.Jen Lendl, a 38-year-old nurse at Kaiser-Oakland, said Whitman’s proposals would roll back benefits and pensions for public employees, who she described as hardworking.”She’s threatening the rights of nurses, patients, also attacking the teachers and firefighters. These are good people,” she said.Whitman was not home Thursday. Instead, she had a campaign event at a flashlight-manufacturing company in the inland Southern California city of Ontario.Afterward, she told reporters that the rally outside her home was a distraction and that she would remain focused on one of her top priorities — developing ways to create private-sector jobs in California.”Everywhere I travel, and you could see it here today, people are very worried about jobs,” she said. “The thing on people’s minds is who has the best chance of fixing the job climate in California?”Her campaign spokeswoman, Sarah Pompei, said Whitman is making an effort to describe her positions directly to nurses. Whitman has mailed letters and fliers to nurses’ homes, urging them not to believe their Democratically aligned union leaders. She says she supports the nurses’ signature issue, a state law that requires one nurse for every five patients, and does not believe all nurses support the union’s antics.Jeanmarie Wong, a nurse at the University of California, Irvine Medical Center, is among those who has been targeted by Whitman — both as a nurse who received the fliers and a registered Republican. But Wong said she cannot support Whitman in November unless she is persuaded she would protect patient safety.”I didn’t necessarily want to vote for her unless she comes out to say that she is in line with the policies that are best for the patient safety and best for nurses in California,” Wong said. “We don’t want to go back, when (nurses) couldn’t get paid, they couldn’t get anybody to listen to them about what was best for health care.”Union leaders say Whitman’s proposal to eliminate thousands of state government positions would leave regulatory agencies that oversee health care understaffed and put patients at risk of having too few nurses. They also say Whitman’s proposed regulatory rollbacks threaten their meal and rest breaks.The nurses association and other unions support Whitman’s Democratic opponent, Attorney General Jerry Brown.Nurses attending Thursday’s protest said they planned to send the mailers back to the Whitman campaign with letters explaining why they do not support her.Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the nurses union, said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he backed nurses — until he was elected and filed a lawsuit against the nurse-patient ratio law. She called Whitman “Schwarzenegger on estrogen.”

One of my favorite things in all the world is watching a right-wing politician do something really foolish.And Meg Whitman, the woman trying to push the “buy it now” button for the governorship of California, is heading down a road of monumental foolishness indeed.How out of touch is she?She’s decided to go to war with the California Nurses Assn.Read the Daily Kos at http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/6/23/878572/-Meg-Whitman-Declares-War-on-Nurses-%28Updated%29

From the California Nurses Association:University of California registered nurses, joined by leaders of their organization from across California and the nation today condemned the latest ruling by a San Francisco court to enjoin registered nurses from striking over a current contract re-opener as a dangerous infringement on democratic rights and an encouragement to hospital officials to continue to ignore pervasive safety problems in UC hospitals.“Today’s decision will not be the last word. We will consider a variety of legal responses and a full range of collective actions to defend the right of our members to continue to advocate for our patients,” said Geri Jenkins, RN, a co-president of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United and a UC San Diego nurse.“This ruling does nothing to address the serious erosion of care standards in UC hospitals, instead seeking to punish and silence the nurses, the canaries in the coal mine, who have been prodding the University for months to correct appalling problems that put patients at risk,” said Jenkins.Jenkins noted that nurses from around the nation have been watching the California fight over their collective patient advocacy rights. UC RNs were joined today in the courtroom by nurse leaders from Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Texas.The biggest victims of the ruling, said Jenkins, are UC patients, already enduring eroding care conditions in UC hospitals while its RNs are blocked by the collusion of the University, the Schwarzenegger administration, whose Public Employment Relations Board sought the injunction, and now the courts, from exercising the right to strike after months of prodding the hospitals to improve care.Today’s decision was decided on extremely narrow, bureaucratic, and technical grounds, said Jenkins, even while the court was affirming the RNs’ ultimate right to strike.By exploiting their “University” label, the UC hospitals, which act like private hospital corporations in much the same manner as other private hospitals in California, the UC system maintains an unfair business advantage over their private hospital competition, said Jenkins.This decision affirms the complicity of the state agencies and at least one court to limit the right of nurses to use the collective action of the right to strike to press for improved patient care conditions which has assisted the RNs in achieving significant gains for patients in private hospitals, Jenkins said.SUPPORT

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/19/opinion/19brown.html?ref=globalNEW YORK TIMESJune 18, 2010Is There a Nurse in the House?By THERESA BROWNPittsburghPICK any of the hospital dramas that have run for decades on American TV, and chances are the heroes are the doctors, running to a patient’s bedside to save a life whenever an alarm goes off.Doctors can indeed be heroes. But when a patient takes a sudden turn for the worse, it’s the nurses who are usually the first to respond. Each patient has a specific nurse assigned to watch over him, and it is that nurse’s responsibility to react immediately in the event of an emergency.That’s getting harder to do, though. Cost-cutting at hospitals often means fewer nurses, so the number of patients each nurse must care for increases, leading to countless unnecessary deaths. Unless Congress mandates a federal standard for nurse-patient ratios, those deaths will continue.A few states already have minimum ratio requirements, most notably California, which in 2004 instituted a one-to-five ratio for surgery patients — as well as a one-to-four ratio in pediatrics and a one-to-two ratio in intensive care — after a decade-long fight led by the California Nurses Association.Laws like these could make a huge difference nationally. A recent study led by Linda Aiken, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, found that New Jersey hospitals would have 14 percent fewer surgical deaths if they matched California’s ratio, while Pennsylvania would have 11 percent fewer. Professor Aiken looked at surgical units only, but it’s reasonable to assume that the percentages would apply on any hospital floor.The reason is simple. The fewer patients each nurse oversees, the easier it is to respond when a patient has an emergency, like a sudden, severe decline in oxygen saturation, a precipitous drop or rise in blood pressure or a heart rate that suddenly skyrockets. A nurse juggling the needs of too many patients might not have the time to notice, let alone respond.Nevertheless, hospitals have resisted mandated ratios. While higher personnel costs are most likely at the core of their opposition, they also argue that hospitals that already have good ratios will use the standards to justify cutting the number of nurses on each floor.This is a reasonable concern, but one that rarely if ever proves true. In more than a decade of research, Professor Aiken reports never seeing such reductions in the wake of mandated ratios. Moreover, if hospitals were so callous, why do many — including my own — often meet or exceed California’s standards?Moreover, it’s not as if such low ratios are a luxury; there’s a reason why minimum ratios are also called “safe staffing levels.” Say a nurse can’t come in because of a family emergency. Then another nurse becomes ill and has to go home. The charge nurse will call around to other staff members, trying to find last-minute replacements. But sometimes there’s no one to come in and no nurses available at the last minute to “float” to the understaffed unit. The lower the ratio, the more likely the nursing staff will be able to cover if and when personnel suddenly become unavailable.The real issue, of course, is cost. There’s no denying that hiring more nurses is more expensive in the short term. But having too few nurses leads to burnout, not only because it’s too much work, but because good nurses quit from the stress of knowing they can’t keep their patients safe. Mandated ratios could ultimately save money, because they would reduce both staff turnover and the number of patients who become critically ill due to insufficient care.And it’s true that, as some argue, the nurse-patient ratio is not the only factor in improving the quality of care. But the data provided by Professor Aiken and others clearly shows that hospitals with the best staffing ratios have the best outcomes overall.The benefits of mandating nurse-to-patient ratios are so compelling that last year Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, introduced a bill to set national standards, while Representative Jan Schakowsky, Democrat of Illinois, offered similar legislation in the House. Yet both bills have languished in committee.On television the doctors and nurses always arrive in time to help a struggling patient. In real life, when nurses are overworked, a patient in distress may be overlooked.To be the nurse in such situations feels horrible. But for the patient it can be far worse.Theresa Brown, an oncology nurse, is a contributor to The Times’s “Well” blog and the author of “Critical Care: A New Nurse Faces Death, Life and Everything In Between.”

Six months after Registered Nurses filed a complaint with the Department of Public Health regarding sweeping and pervasive patient care problems at the University of California Davis Medical Center in Sacramento state officials have yet to act, the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United said today.The complaint cites case after case of substantial under staffing that has led to near misses of serious injuries: for newborn, pediatric and adult patients, in heart, burn, neurological, post-surgical and other units. Among the many examples are dangerous delays in responding to emergencies, providing medications or antibiotics, and care for patients in substantial distress.UCD’s own staffing documentation provided to DPH by CNA shows that one-third of shifts at UC Davis were staffed with fewer RNs than the law required based on how sick patients were.At the request of the UC hospitals and another Schwarzenegger-dominated agency, the Public Employee Relations Board, a state Superior Court last week issued a temporary order to block a planned one day UC strike on June 10.A follow up hearing is scheduled this Friday, June18,  in San Francisco. Nurses will rally outside the courthouse, at 8:30 a.m., 400 McAllister, San Francisco, prior to the hearing.‘No one assigned’ to investigate patient care problemsAn extensive complaint was filed with CDPH on November 2, 2009, following months of efforts by UC Davis RNs and CNA to prod hospital officials to correct the understaffing that is the source of most of the patient care problems. Yet despite several follow up calls over the past few months, the state has still not investigated. “No one has been assigned,” a CDPH representative told CNA’s UC Division Director Beth Kean on Monday.“The inaction by our public oversight agency is unconscionable and should sound an alarm across California,” said CNA/NNU co-president and UC San Diego RN Geri Jenkins. “Part of the blame lies squarely in the hands of Gov. Schwarzenegger for the irresponsible furloughs of public staff and the systematic underfunding of our regulatory agencies, but it is also the responsibility of the state to follow up on these serious problems that endanger public safety.”“Ultimately, the disgraceful failure is the responsibility of the University hospital administration for failing to act on our repeated demands for action to protect the especially fragile and vulnerable patients who count on UC hospitals for care,” Jenkins said.“UC officials have refused to work with nurses to fix these alarming shortcomings for more than two years, and even ignored the pleas of state legislators to act,” said Kean. The University has also deliberately delayed and canceled arbitrations scheduled to resolve patient care complaints, and the University also rejected proposed solutions submitted by a neutral fact finder, jointly chosen by the UC and RNs, Kean said.“Only after the repeated stonewalling and apparent indifference to their massive patient care inadequacies did the nurses feel they had no choice but to plan for a strike,” said Kean.Serious problems throughout the UC hospital systemDavis is not the only UC medical center with serious patient problems, notes CNA.UC San Francisco has experienced major staffing cuts in its general medical and post-surgical units and step-down (an intermediate care unit between intensive care and the general medical floors). In the hospital’s transplant unit, patients recovering from liver or kidney transplant surgery are regularly being cared for inadequate number of nurses in violation of the state’s minimum nurse-to-patient ratio law.UC Irvine has repeatedly not passed inspections by federal regulators due to numerous patient care problems, including staffing issues. The problems are so severe that the hospital is being threatened by the regulators with loss of its Medicare certification.At Davis, one-third of shifts were staffed with fewer RNs than the law required based on how sick patients were, as revealed by the hospital’s own documents.As a result, individual patients at UC Davis were repeatedly put in jeopardy because of short staffing, according to the complaint. Some examples:

• Cardiothoracic stepdown unit (heart patients). Delays in care for patients on ventilators that led to respiratory distress and other incidents. Late medications and assessments. A patient deteriorating because nurses were unable to monitor as needed. Nurses unable to walk patients, provide wound care, or give adequate discharge instruction.
• Burn unit. New burn patients admitted without adequate staff; extremely anxious new burn patients not adequately cared for.
• Orthopedic trauma unit. IVs left beeping, numerous delays in pain pills and other medications.
• Pediatrics. Frequent delays in needed lab and other tests, long waits for medical transports; in one case delayed transport situation a developmentally delayed 5-year old bit and hit herself and others.
• Neurosurgical intensive care. A 20-week pregnant patient went for three days without being fed even though nutritional issues were paramount for the baby.
• Newborn intensive care: A premature baby was accidentally fed twice, with formula having to be suctioned out of the baby’s stomach before serious complications could occur. Numerous late feedings, late assessments, medication errors, and other short staffing issues.

We thought you’d like to hear how patients in Minnesota reacted to the largest-ever strike.

Cue the harp

From our friends at the California Nurses Association:

HCA RNs at Del Sol Medical Center in El Paso, Texas celebrate victorious vote count to join the National Nurses United.

UC Medical Centers, plus several Ca. hospitals join forces over crisis of patient safety in state’s hospitalsAs many as 13,000 registered nurses from hospitals throughout California are issuing a one-day strike notice Friday morning over patient care shortcomings at their facilities, the California Nurses Association announced today.The key sticking point is safe nurse-to-patient staffing. The hospitals’ proposals leave serious patient care issues unaddressed, notably the need for safe staffing at all times, even during nurse meal and rest breaks.  Secondarily, the RNs are fighting to protect their retirement, which is a key factor in recruitment and retention of experienced nurses.In November, a neutral fact-finder chosen by the University of California and CNA made contract recommendations concerning staffing and benefit protections that UC has refused to adhere to. In March, more than 40 state legislators wrote to UC President Mark Yudof encouraging UC to accept the fact-finder’s recommendations.At UC Davis, for example, internal staffing documentation from last year found that one-third of the shifts were short one or more RNs in each unit than what was required by the individual  patient acuities on those shifts.Nurses are seeking to strengthen enforcement of the state’s legally mandated staffing ratios and guard against politicians and the hospital industry who seek to roll back patient safeguards including the ratios as well as guarantees that nurses – who typically work 12-hour days – receive rest and meal breaks during their shifts.“We are often short staffed and there is no break relief coverage,” said Shirley Toy, an RN and member of the bargaining team at UC Davis. “We need break relief RNs on every shift on every unit. Our patients deserve uninterrupted patient care when RNs are on break or lunch.”“Nurses give everything we have to our patients,” said Valerie Verity-Mock, an RN at Citrus Valley Medical Center, and a bargaining team member. “We have worked very hard to build a secure future and deserve to retire with dignity.”The RNs come from five University of California Medical Centers—San Diego, Irvine, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sacramento —as well as four other facilities: Citrus Valley Medical Center (Covina), San Pedro Hospital (San Pedro), Marina del Rey Medical Center (Los Angeles) and Olympia Medical Center (Los Angeles).Stay in the loop  by visiting the California Nurses Association at www.calnurses.org.

Big strike vote set in Minnesota, if approved would be the largest in U.S. history. Linda Hamilton, RN in the Children’s Hospital System and president of the Minnesota Nurses Association writes, “Everybody knows a nurse. And right now, more than 12,000 of us are in the fight of our lives with six different Twin Cities hospital systems…What are we fighting for? The simple answer is this: We’re fighting for you. We’re fighting for any patient who ever walks through the doors of one of our hospitals…The math doesn’t lie: The thinner nurses are spread in hospitals, the greater number of patients who die…Nurses never have been and never will be in this profession for the money. We are in the profession for one simple reason – we care about you.”Read the whole editorial at the Pioneer Press TwinCities.com.Help us help Minnesota nurses put the pressure on. Share this article with your friends or contact the Minnesota Nurses Association and see what you can do.

Our friends at the California Nurses Association report that “more than 1,000 registered nurses from across the country rallied in Washington DC Wednesday, raising an unprecedented, unified voice for patient safety reforms and new, national standards for patient care conditions and standards for nurses.

NNU Rally 2010 Washington DC

The 28-day strike at Temple University Hospital has ended with new contract agreements that provide “some of the best working conditions and benefits in Philadelphia,” thanks to the united efforts of PASNAP, the union that represents 1500 nurses, professionals and technical employees.Read the whole story on the California Nurses Association website: “Temple Unions Ratify New Contracts, Declare Victory after Strike”

Nurse Talk traveled to Disneyland for the AATH (Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor) 2010 Conference. The conference tag this year was “Biology of Hope/Healing Power of the Human Spirit”.  Although our stay was cut short due to my creative travel arrangements—it was fabulous to meet such wonderful, smart, funny people who are up to such amazing things. AATH is where the community of professionals who study, (yes it is true!) practice, and promote healthy humor and laughter connect.We were invited by this year’s conference co-chairs Mary Kay Morrison and Chip Lutz, and the President of AATH herself, Karyn Buxman. A big shout out to all of you for putting on “the big show” and inviting us to attend. This was the first conference I have ever been to where I didn’t have to make excuses for our crew’s irreverent and inappropriate behavior—in fact all of this is encouraged! Next year we will be back—only this time I will have a professional travel agent make the arrangements so we can stay for the entire conference.Thanks for the memories and the wonderful connections—and for those of you who have not heard of AATH or the conference—check it out at aath.org or go to our website’s links page at nursetalksite.com.Thanks to all of our new friends for the work you do every day to make the world a better, happier place!Enjoy some pics from the conference…

Theresa, Amy & Denise--Need we say more?!

Laughter is the best medicine

Nurse Talk's Casey Hobbs and Chip Lutz, AATH Conference Co-Chair and President Elect

RNs at Cypress-Fairbanks Hospital in Houston recently voted to remain members of National Nurses Organizing Committee-Texas, the state’s affiliate of National Nurses United, the national union and professional association for RNs.Read the whole story on the California Nurses Association website: “RNs at Houston’s Cypress-Fairbanks Hospital Vote to Reaffirm Membership in National Nurses United”

Our friends at the California Nurses Association report…Seven of California’s biggest insurance companies rejected on average more than one-fourth of all payment claims in the second half of 2009, according to new data just released by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee and its national arm, National Nurses United. Read entire article…

From our friends at National Nurses United: Join your fellow RNs, National Nurses United members, and the Registered Nurse Response Network on an emergency mission to help Haiti. “All of the hospitals are packed with people. It is a catastrophe,” said, President René Préval of Haiti to the New York Times. HOW CAN YOU HELP?The Registered Nurse Response Network (RNRN) is a national network of direct-care RNs that coordinates sending volunteer RNs to disaster stricken areas wherever and whenever they are needed most. RNRN was organized in 2005 when Katrina and Rita — two of the most destructive hurricanes in history — dramatically exposed America’s flawed disaster relief system.Through RNRN, we hope to send experienced RNs to provide emergency medical support to Haitians who are dire need of medical care. “We are calling on nurses throughout the U.S. to join us in this critical effort,” said National Nurses United (NNU) Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro.*RNs VOLUNTEER ONLINE HERE*MAKE SECURE ONLINE DONATIONS HEREOr – Make checks payable to:California Nurses Foundation2000 Franklin St. Oakland, CA 94612(Donations are secure, and tax-deductible to the extent of the law)* CALL THE RNRN HOTLINE (800) 578-8225WHAT TO EXPECT:Currently, telephone communication is down, and internet communication is sporadic. Aftershocks continued well through the night until approximately 3:00 o’clock this morning. Infrastructure damage is significant; the National Palace has collapsed, and the National Cathedral, many buildings have been severely damaged.All RNs will need to have a valid passport. Also, all RNs must have or be able to quickly get, Typhoid and Hepititals A and B vaccinations as well as Malaria pills.”I tried to volunteer with at least half a dozen relief agencies who said they needed nurses in the region without success. It was a matter of days after contacting [RNRN] that I arrived in my assigned hospital in Baton Rouge. The hospital was in dire need of nurses as a result of getting the bulk of medical evacuees from New Orleans, which resulted in a doubling of their census overnight. Ten minutes after my arrival, I had a nursing license in Louisiana, changed into scrubs, and went to work.”- Gulf Volunteer Diane Dengate, RN of Detroit, MichiganNational Nurses United2000 Franklin StreetOakland, Calif. 94612www.NationalNursesUnited.org

JOIN NURSE TALK’s Casey Hobbs and Peter B. Collins forNational Nurses United / California Nurses Foundation*SEND A NURSE TO HAITI – BENEFIT TELETHON*January 30th, LIVE at www.nursetalksite.com 6-8 pm PSTThe Registered Nurse Response Network, a national network of direct-care RNs, coordinates sending volunteer RNs to disaster stricken areas. Through RNRN, National Nurses United is sending experienced RNs to provide emergency medical support to Haiti.”We are calling on nurses throughout the U.S. to join us in this critical effort.” said NNU’s Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro. Your charitable contributions will be used to pay for travel/related costs and supplies for volunteer RNs.SEND A NURSE TO HAITI BENEFIT FUNDRAISERSATURDAY, JANUARY 30TH, 7PMNational Nurses United / California Nurses FoundationDear Friends,Several weeks ago our friends at the RN Response Network and National Nurses United put out a call to RNs to volunteer to help in Haiti. As of this date over 11,000 nurses have signed up but the challenge remains to get them there safely and in time to meet the critical needs of the Haitian people. They need money to cover the costs of travel, medical supplies and fresh drinking water. Nurse Talk wants to help.Please help us help people in desperate need. Join us “virtually” from the comfort of your home on Saturday, January 30 @ 6-8PM/PST as we live stream our version of a telethon at www.nursetalksite.com—which will not feature any big named artists—Madonna, George Clooney, Sting, Beyonce—–but Bay Area broadcaster Peter B. Collins will be with us along with Casey Hobbs, RN Host of Nurse Talk…and a few other surprises.You can call during the telethon at 1.888.573.8372 and you will speak to one of the Nurse Talk celebrities—well, someone will pick up the phone and be very grateful that you called. If you can’t join us, you can still help by going to www.sendanurse.org to make a donation.This is an opportunity to know your contribution will have a direct impact on those who need it the most. Your donations are tax deductible.Thank you for your time and support…Sincerely,Pattie LockardExecutive ProducerNurse Talkwww.nursetalksite.compattie@nursetalksite.com===============================================Other ways you can help:1) Volunteer: NationalNursesUnited.com2) Fundraiser: Send a Nurse Fundraiser, January 30th3) Donate: RNRN/NNU, c/o California Nurses Foundation, 2000 Franklin St.,Oakland, CA 94612 or online at SendANurse.orgRNRN is a project of the California Nurses Foundation, a 501(c)(3)nonprofit. Donations are secure, and tax-deductible to the extent of thelaw.

Nurse Talk spoke with RN Carole Rodgers last week. (See show 219, December 27, 2009) Carole works at the Alameda County Medical Center and has recently been active in the fight to keep San Leandro Hospital open. The hospital is now run by Sutter Health Group who is trying to close it. Closing facilities that serve the “underserved” is a pattern that is practiced by Sutter.

SAVE SAN LEANDRO HOSPITAL

Supporters say, “We need the help from the community to let our County Board of Supervisors know they have the power to keep San Leandro Hospital open as an acute care facility – with a 24 hour emergency room!”http://www.savesanleandrohospital.com/

This marks the end of a fabulous year for Nurse Talk. Our audience has increased 500% (no, really!) and we are having more fun than anyone should. Thank you all for supporting us…we couldn’t do it without the kindness of strangers and friends. Hats off to the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee for putting their faith in us. They have truly been the best partners we could ask for. We would also like to thank the Jeanie C. Linders Fund and Home Access Capital for their generous support. A big thanks to all of our guests without whom the show would not be possible. Thanks to our great crew, June Miller of JMC Sound, Peter B. Collins and Tonia McCallum. AND last but not least THANK YOU LISTENERS! Stay with us because we are just getting started.Next year we have plans to expand into other markets and will be traveling to do some remote broadcasts. In May (National Nurses Day) we will broadcast live from the Center For American Progress in our Nations Capital. We will also be doing some live shows of Nurse Talk a various venues around the Bay Area.We hope this holiday brings you joy and time with family and friends. Best wishes for the New Year.Warmly,Pattie LockardExecutive ProducerNurse Talk LLC

Laughter is the Best Medicine! Start your New Year Laughing with 12 free CEs for RNs!Certified Laughter Yoga Leader TrainingDo it for yourself. Share it with others.Saturday. January 23. 1 – 6 p.m.Sunday. January 24. 10 – 6 p.m.UCSF Osher Center for Integrative MedicineThe Circle Room, 1701 Divisadero, Suite 150San Francisco, CA 94115Fee: $295 Includes training manual, certificate, 12CEs for RNs; yoga mats, blankets and bolsters, snacks and lots of healing laughs. 12.0 RN contact hours offered through UCSF Department of Nursing. (CA Board of Registered Nursing Provider # CEP 12980)Carmela was a guest on the show.  You can listen to the program by clicking here. From the flyer for the training:Laughter Yoga is a combination of yoga breathwork, clapping, stretching, group laughter yoga exercises, solo laughter meditations and deep relaxation for stress relief. Laughter Yoga was created by Dr. Madan Kataria, M.D. and his yoga teacher wife, Madhuri in Mumbai, India in 1995 and is now practiced in 67 countries around the world. www.laughteryoga.orgDuring the training you will learn and lead laughter yoga techniques seated, standing, moving about the room and on the floor. Adaptations will be offered to sensitively accommodate diverse populations. Upon certification, as part of an international network, you will have access to an array of professional resources and promotional tools to support you as a professional Certified Laughter Yoga Leader.Laughter is the Best Medicine!The medical benefits include:

• increased blood, tissue and organ oxygenation
• elevated endorphin levels and time-released serotonin which can reduce aches, pains, anxiety & depression
• improved circulation; provides a cardiac workout
• enhanced immune, digestive and cardiac systems
• decreased cortisol and stress; relaxes and strengthens muscles
• laughing together provides a healthy & fun community connection

___________________________________________________________Carmela Carlyle, M.A. Clinical Psychology, RYT, Certified Integrative Yoga Therapy Teacher and Certified Laughter Yoga Teacher and TrainerCarmela is a highly-qualified training specialist, counselor and yoga therapist who has worked as part of medical interdisciplinary teams, with hospice, in mental health services, in skilled nursing and eldercare residential settings for many years. She teaches in a variety of venues throughout the Bay Area, maintains a private Yoga Therapy practice and is a popular presenter at professional conferences and retreats. Carmela was trained and certified by Dr. Kataria and specializes in training healthcare professionals. Register at: www.carmelacarlyle.com 707.765.9035.Teresa Corrigan R.N. M.A. B.C.I.A.: Certified Laughter Yoga Leader & Biofeedback PractitionerTeresa is a pioneer in the development of creative stress, anxiety and pain management strategies. Teaching Laughter Yoga on Wednesday evenings and integrating Laughter Yoga into her practice at the UCSF Osher Center, she is seeing a breakthrough in patients who’ve not had much to laugh about for a long while. For more information about the U.C.S.F.’s Wednesday Evening Laughter Yoga Club visit website: www.osher.ucsf.eduMore info at www.carmelacarlyle.com

“Given the current push to reform health care, this new union could make a difference for both nurses and our patients. As a nurse now focused on quality improvement, I would like to see nursing unions bring out the best in nurses by promoting compliance to evidence-based best practices and supporting professional development. There is now evidence to support IV therapy teams in hospitals and appropriate staffing ratios. Since the evidence is there, let’s push to make these a reality in a majority of hospitals instead of only a few. At the same time, let’s hold our fellow professionals accountable to provide safe care 100% of the time, down to the idea that hand hygiene is not optional.”From New National Nurses Union Forms — But What’s It Mean to You?By Peggy McDaniel, BSN, RNAmerican Journal of NursingDecember 8, 2009Read More…

From the new nurses’ super-union, National Nurses United. A PDF of this flyer can be downloaded to pass along to colleagues.Nurses from coast to coast have yearned for a powerful, national movement of direct-care RNs to strengthen our voice at the bedside and in the corridors of Congress and our state capitols, to transform our healthcare system, and to protect our patients, our colleagues, and our profession.Until now, direct-care RNs have been fragmented in separate unions or poorly represented by non-RN unions that fail to prioritize the unique needs of RNs and patients. Countless RNs have been denied the right to form a union.We need a national union of direct-care RNs, lead by direct-care RNs, that can speak with a strong, uni?ed professional voice nationally. We need to use our collective strength to reverse the growing, multi-state attacks by the healthcare industry on RN staffing, professional practice, compensation, health benefits, retirement security, and our ability to be patient advocates and our right to form unions.Now is the time! With the formation of National Nurses United, we have a historic opportunity to create just that kind of powerful voice. RNs from CNA/NNOC, MNA, and the UAN are coming together to create a 150,000 “RN Super-Union,” the largest union and most in?uential collective voice of registered nurses in US history, in a step that has already drawn the attention of our employers, our legislators, and the tens of thousands of unrepresented nurses throughout the country.How will the “RN Super-Union” affect my life as a RN?When faced with chronic unsafe staffing, a lack of a voice in decisions that affect our practice, and lack of respect at the workplace, RNs leave the bedside. With the “RN Super-Union,” gone are the days of RNs feeling alone, overwhelmed, and powerless to change the healthcare system. When we work together we can:• Win national RN staffing ratios and an end to mandatory overtime nationally.• Obtain organized power and influence for our profession, like teachers, police, and fire?ghters have done.• Build a national retirement pension for nurses.• Create one national progressive voice for healthcare reform, protection and advancement of safe nursing practice.• Strengthen contract standards nationally for nurses that already have union contracts.• Reach out to organize the millions of nurses in America who have been waiting for the opportunity to be part of a union.• Take back our profession so that every RN can advocate for patients without fear of retribution.We are changing the face of nursing in America!The “RN Super-Union” Moves ForwardThis historic affiliation agreement has already been approved by elected BODs/Exec. Boards for all three organizations. To make it official, delegate bodies from each of the organizations must also approve the affiliation.• CNA/NNOC’s delegate body voted unanimously for the affiliation in September.• Massachusetts Nurses Association’s convention voted overwhelmingly in October to affiliate.• UAN’s National Labor Assembly representing 80% of UAN members voted unanimously to support the affiliation in November. All that remains is a UAN mail ballot process — a formality given that the majority of UAN delegates have already spoken in support of the affiliation.With any major advance, there will be some detractors who, like healthcare industry employers, are in favor of keeping RN voices divided across individual states, but this historic process, favored and greeted with enthusiasm by the overwhelming majority of all our members, is rapidly proceeding.What’s Next?In December, RNs from around the country will travel to Arizona for National Nurses United’s founding convention. Convention delegates will demonstrate the power of the national “RN Super-Union” by moving forward together to put plans into action to achieve our goals for national staf?ng ratios, guaranteed healthcare for all, and organizing RNs that want a collective voice to advocate for the their patients.RNs that work in similar hospital types or chains will come together in National Summit meetings to harness and coordinate collective power. A National Political Summit will coordinate our political and legislative efforts, including implementing a plan to pass SB 1031, the bill that would create national RN staf?ng ratios, and we are planning another major gathering of nurses in Washington in May for National Nurses Week, building on our great “RN Day of Action” last May.We will forge international ties with nurses in other countries. The president of the Canadian Federation of nurses will speak at our convention in Arizona. We have strong links with nurses in Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Japan, the United Kingdom, and many other countries in Latin America, Europe, and Asia in particular.Sharing our successes, our experiences, and our collective work, will strengthen our ability to protect patients, improve healthcare, and promote the role of nurses across borders.A New Day for RNsOur national movement is animated by a guiding vision of a new moment for nurses, a once in a lifetime opportunity to dramatically improve the lives of all nurses and patients and transform the face of healthcare. But we also face enormous challenges and threats from a billion dollar healthcare industry determined to undermine our progress and our standards.A moment to build a healthcare system based on compassion and patient need, not on greed. To ensure our hospitals and clinics are centers of healing, not profit centers for speculators and CEOs. To promote our profession and honor the dedication of front line nurses with safe conditions, fair compensation, and the ability to retire in dignity.Every year, national polls document that registered nurses are the most trusted profession in America. That is a sacred trust that reflects the confidence and support we have from our patients and the public. It’s up to all of us, through our unity, our vision, and our collective strength to fulfill the promise.Get Involved — It’s Our FutureTo participate, contact:Deborah Burger, RN, CNA/NNOC Council of Presidents, dburger@calnurses.orgJean Ross, RN, UAN Secretary-Treasurer, jean.ross@mnnurses.orgKaren Higgins, RN, Massachusetts Nurses Association, MNAinfo@mnarn.orgRN Network in Action: Please pass along this flyer to to all of your RN friends and colleagues!

“Nurses from three unions, including the powerful California Nurses Association, have founded a new national union to influence national health care policies and try to extend California’s patient ratio law into other states.Organizers said the 150,000-member National Nurses United, the largest professional union for registered nurses in the country, will also flex its power to push for a stronger voice in the health care overhaul process going on in Congress and the expansion of representation for nonunion nurses.”From theSan Francisco ChronicleVictoria Colliver, Chronicle Staff WriterTuesday, December 8, 2009Read more

LaTonia Denise Wright of Nursing-Jurist.com writes about the new nurses super-union, National Nurses United, “the nursing unions are about to ‘go hard or go home.’ Don’t know what this slang means just Google it!… A nursing revolution or the evolution of nursing, maybe? Changes are needed in the nursing workplace, ready or not.”Read the rest of LaTonia’s post at her Nursing Law and Order blog at http://advocatefornurses.typepad.com/my2cents/2009/08/the-new-rn-super-union-is-the-national-united-nurses-ready-or-not-here-it-comes.html

Present at the Birth: The National Nurses Movementby Chico David, RNI’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…*Chico David RN’s diary*At the opening reception last night the excitement was palpable as nurses from many states shared their happiness at the step we were about to take…From Jean Ross of the UAN and now co-president of the new NNU:”This is where we need to be, together as one, moving across the country. some of us have been waiting our whole careers for this.”Read the original article at the Daily Kos: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/12/7/811481/-Present-at-the-birth:-The-National-Nurses-Movement

For Immediate ReleaseDecember 7, 2009RNs Pledge Major Boost in Organizing, Voice in CongressPHOENIX – To standing cheers, delegates to the founding convention of the National Nurses United (NNU) today unanimously endorsed the creation of the largest union and professional organization of registered nurses in U.S. history – and projected a major escalation in campaigns to expand union representation of nurses and an expanded voice in healthcare reform.”The promise of the future has arrived,” said Karen Higgins, an RN from Massachusetts, and one of three newly elected presidents of the NNU, “with all the unlimited potential, creativity, vision, and power represented” by the delegates in the room, and the 150,000 members of the founding organizations.NNU unites three of the most active, progressive organizations in the U.S.—and the major voices of unionized nurses—in the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, United American Nurses, and Massachusetts Nurses Association.In adopting a constitution and electing national officers, the NNU plans to quickly move forward on an active campaign to:

• Advance the interests of direct care nurses and patients across the U.S.
• Organize all direct care RNs “into a single organization capable of exercising influence over the healthcare industry, governments, and employers.”
• Promote effective collective bargaining representation to all NNU affiliates to promote the economic and professional interests of all direct care RNs.
• Expand the voice of direct care RNs and patients in public policy, including the enactment of safe nurse-to-patient ratios and patient advocacy rights in Congress and every state.
• Win “healthcare justice, accessible, quality healthcare for all, as a human right.”

“This is where we need to be, together as one, moving across the country,” said Jean Ross, secretary-treasurer of the UAN, and new NNU co-president. “Some of us have been waiting our whole careers for this.”"This means we finally have (an organization and constitution) that directly challenges the role of corporations in healthcare delivery, instead of accommodating and enabling their control,” said Minnesota Nurses Association President Linda Hamilton, RN.”We are going to make sure we organize every single direct care RN in this country. RNs and our patients deserve to have a national nurses movement that can advocate for them,” said Deborah Burger, RN of CNA/NNOC, and the third co-president of NNU.”There are a few things in history that really stand out and make a difference, this is one of them,” said Jeff Breslin, RN president of the Michigan Nurses Association.”It’s a new day in America,” said CNA/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro, and “it is 100 years overdue.”Delegates to the convention were also greeted by Stewart Acuff, personal assistant to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, NNU is affiliated with the AFL-CIO, and Linda Silas, RN, president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions.”You are going to make a difference for this country by uniting your power and strengthening your voice,” said Acuff. The founding of the NNU is a major step forward in the fight to achieve “healthcare for every American regardless of ability to pay, socio-economic status, or accident of birth,” and to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, Acuff said. “We can best lift America out of this recession by passing EFCA” and strengthening the ability of nurses and all workers to form unions and bargain collectively.Silas hailed the creation of the NNU, and said she looks forward to working with NNU to build and support nurses unions around the world.Contacts:CNA/NNOC: Charles Idelson, 510-273-2246, 415-559-8991 (cell), Shum Preston, 510-273-2276, Liz Jacobs, 510-273-2232Massachusetts: David Schildmeier, 781-830-5717, 781-249-0430 (cell)Michigan: Mary Holbrook, 517-230-4086Minnesota: Jan Rabbers, 651-414-2861, 612-860-6658 (cell)UAN- Suzanne Martin, 240-821-1825

The folks over at the Executive Labor Summary Blog by Constangy Brooks & Smith LLC—management lawyers have noticed that the nurses have been up to something:”The stage is now set for the formation of a new 150,000-member super union for registered nurses at a founding convention in December. The new union, which will be called National Nurses United, combines the membership of the California Nurses Association, the United American Nurses and the Massachusetts Nurses Association. Deborah Burger, co-president of California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, has proclaimed, “This is a truly historic moment and I hope it sends chills down the backs of those employers who would want to keep us down.’”Indeed.

Of all the torrent of words that followed House passage of its version of healthcare reform legislation in early November, perhaps the most misleading were those comparing it to enactment of Social Security and Medicare.

Rose Ann DeMoro, CNA/NNOC Executive Director

1. Passage of the bill was a clear defeat for the Republican opposition and those on the right who have so mischaracterized what boils down to modest reform that looks more like a “robust” version of the Medicare prescription drug benefit or the state children’s health initiative.
2. Proponents of the bill, starting in the White House and running through the Democratic leadership in Congress, with the assistance and support of many in labor and liberal and progressive constituency groups, have so lowered expectations on healthcare reform that with eyes wide shut they can call this a sweeping victory.

To be sure there are commendable provisions in the House bill that bear note. Among the most important are:

• Expansion of Medicaid to millions of low income adults.
• Reduction of the “doughnut hole” in the Medicare drug coverage law making drug costs more affordable for many seniors.
• Increased federal funding for community health programs, such as home visits for nurses and social workers to low income families.
• Additional regulation of the insurance industry, mostly targeted to people who are presently without coverage rather than those with existing health plans. Those include limits on insurers ability to drop sick enrollees or refuse to sell policies to people with prior health problems, extending the age that dependent children can be on their parents’ plan, and repeal of the anti-trust exemption for insurers.
• Extending the same health benefit tax benefits available to married couples to domestic partners.
• A progressive tax to help pay the bill through a surcharge on wealthy earners and required contributions from large employers, in sharp contrast with the Senate proposal to tax health benefits on misnamed “Cadillac” plans, comprehensive coverage available to many union members, for example.

But the acclaim now flowing from some quarters would have been better deserved had these provisions been enacted on their own — not accompanied by the many shortcomings of the legislation. To cite a few:

• Healthcare will remain unaffordable for many Americans. The bill does not do nearly enough to control skyrocketing insurance, pharmaceutical, and hospital costs. Indeed, by various estimates, with no effective limits on the insurance industry’s price gouging, out-of-pocket costs for premiums, deductibles and other fees by some estimates with eat up from 15 to 19 percent of family incomes by several accounts.
• No meaningful reform of the rampant insurance denials of medical treatment the insurers don’t want to for, for people with insurance.
• Little assistance for individuals and families who presently have employer-sponsored health plans and face frequent erosion of their coverage and health security. No help for the healthcare cost-shifting from employers to employees.
• Minimal expansion of consumer choice. The much debated public plan option will be available only to about 2 percent of people under age 65, mostly those now not covered who buy insurance on their own (it may or may not be expanded in 2015). Further, no additional plan options for those in the many markets dominated by one or two private plans, and no additional choice of doctor or hospital within existing plans.
• The new limits on abortion extended to poor women.

Ultimately, the combination of the mandate to buy insurance, federal subsidies to low income families to purchase private plans, failure to adequately control insurance prices or crack down on the abuse of insurance denials make the House bill — and its Senate counterpart — look a lot like a massive bailout for the private insurance industry.Don’t be misled by the howling from insurance industry which has been spending some $1.4 million a day to steer the direction of legislation. They would have preferred the status quo, but will be more than happy to count the increased revenues coming their way.As Rep. Dennis Kucinich said on the House floor, “we cannot fault the insurance companies for being what they are. But we can fault legislation in which the government incentivizes the perpetuation, indeed the strengthening, of the for-profit health insurance industry, the very source of the problem.”While some people will have improved access, the final accounting will be an even firmer private insurance grip on our healthcare system, with the U.S. remaining the only industrialized nation which barters our health for private profit.Months ago, the Obama administration pre-determined this outcome by ruling out the most comprehensive, most cost effective, most humane reform, single payer, or an expanded and improved Medicare for all. Single payer proponents were shut out of White House forums, blocked from most hearings in the Senate, and single payer amendments stripped from the final House bill. Yet, through grassroots pressure, single-payer advocates forced consideration by the House of an improved Medicare for all until the very end.But nurses and other single payer proponents who have heroically fought for this reform for years will continue the campaign, next in the Senate, where single payer amendments are expected to be introduced. The scene will also shift to state capitols, where vibrant single payer movements remain active and will escalate.Proponents of comprehensive reform will never be silent, and never stop working for the real change we most desperately need.

According to Organizing for America, “The House’s first full vote on health reform legislation may come as early as this week. It’ll be the first time in more than 60 years that the full body votes on comprehensive reform, and we expect it to be very close.”We invite you to view this video of Donna Smith, who was featured in Micheal Moore’s movie, SiCKO, then call your representative to voice your support for health care reform.You can get a sample script if you need one, and your rep’s telephone number at the Organizing for America web site. Let’s get it done.

The California Nurses Association has issued a position statement with regard to medical practices and vaccinations for RNs. “As the H1N1 (swine influenza) pandemic escalates in our facilities and our communities, the CNA/NNOC Board of Directors has adopted a position statement on the role of the RN in combating H1N1 and protecting our patients and ourselves…We also remain very concerned about the ongoing gaps and failures of many hospitals to provide adequate safety precautions for patients, families, nurses, and other healthcare workers.” You can learn more at their web site at http://www.calnurses.org/swineflu where you can also find an interactive map from the CDC showing reported cases state-by-state.Listen to our show from Saturday, October 11th for a discussion with De Ann McEwen from the Board of Directors of CNA/NNOC. She spoke about the critical need for health care workers to be able to stay home without repercussion from employers if they feel they have the potential to spread the disease to others at work. Yes, please!

Hi All,Nurse Talk is off to a great season! It will be greater when we find out what makes people engage in our blog. Come on y’all..this is the best time in our history to talk about anything related to healthcare—or the lack there-of . We just finished a story last night about the “Fat Baby” Alex that couldn’t get health insurance. Guess what—-Alex just got health insurance due to the heat the media put on the health insurance company! Good job and I am so glad for Baby Alex!

Guess what! You can now hear Nurse Talk on Energy Talk Radio at energytalkradio.comThat means you can listen anywhere online, on your ipod, your Blackberry or your BoomerBox! That’s energytalkradio.com.

Good morning everyone. It is with great pleasure we announce the return of Nurse Talk to the radio. We will be back on San Francisco Bay Area’s Green 960 AM in Mid August. In the meantime watch for some new features on the NT site. Nurse Talk Theatre is guaranteed to cure what ails you…because of course, at Nurse Talk our tag line is “laughter is the best medicine.” We will also be posting our new NT advice column so get ready with your questions for Casey and Maggie, our fabulous RN hosts.We’re going to bring the Baby Whisperer back for some advice for moms and dads too. Go out and make it a great summer day!