Nurses from Nevada and around the country  continued rolling through Western Nevada today as part of the “Drive for Healthcare Voters” tour, visiting the small towns of Gardnerville and  Fallon.  The tour is being put on by the National Nurses Organizing Committee, which is America’s largest RN union, and is complemented by a campaign including mail pieces, phonebanking, and advertising.  Our goal is to make sure that voters have the information they need to be healthcare voters.

Day 2 of the tour was intense and emotional, as our healthcare outreach led to many conversations with voters about what is going on in their lives.

Our first stop was at Woodett’s diner, the main joint in Gardnerville.  15 nurses, one gigantic wrapped bus with our “Healthcare Report Cards” on the presidential candidates printed in 10-foot high letters, and a newspaper photographer.  Yep, we were a scene.  Nurses in scrubs fanned out in pairs and spoke to about 50 voters in our visit.

The themes we heard in Gardnerville are similar to what we’re hearing throughout Nevada:  people are hurting economically, deeply, today.  They told us stories of losing their jobs, and losing their healthcare.  Many of the older voters talked about their childhood, in harder economic times, that seem to have returned today.  We passed shuttered stores and houses for sale.

Some of the people we talked to were angry about the direction of our country–and some were scared.   Some people pointed fingers at immigrants, but many more talked about a feeling of helplessness in the face of Washington D.C. and Wall Street, of politicians and businessmen on the take.

Wherever they were coming from, almost every single person was receptive to our message, thanking us and blessing us, bonding with the nurses they knew were on their side.  People hugged the nurses, and encouraged us in our work, even those who did not agree with us.

Only a few were rude.  One physician and his wife, who deigned to speak with nurses, informed us that health care reform would only lead to waiting lines-and that we have to “draw the line somewhere” on who gets healthcare.  A couple of young punks told us that they were working with the McCain campaign…and were made obviously uncomfortable when our nurse  Jill thanked them for their civic service and made them pose for a photograph with the nurses.  

From Gardnerville we rolled through the sagebrush and the high plains to another press event and another meeting with voters.

This one, though, was different.  

This was Fallon, Nevada…a symbol of our broken healthcare system and how it wastes innocent American lives.  About a decade ago, a pediatric cancer cluster began to grow in Fallon, eventually striking 17 young children with a deadly form of leukemia.

Maybe it was the nearby Navy Air base, or maybe the nearby chemical plant.  Either way, we put these kids in harm’s way…and then abandoned them when harm struck.  At least one of the youngsters died a few years ago, due to insurance company denials of care…the very denials that would end with HR 676 and guaranteed healthcare.

The mood in Fallon was somber.  Our conversations with voters outside the hospital were shorter.  We were on hallowed ground there and we knew it.  We were fortunate and honored to be able to film an interview with one of the grassroots activists who had worked to bring justice to the children stricken by the cancer cluster.

We went to a nearby Wal-Mart afterwards to do more public outreach.  Management kicked us out of course…but not before whispering that they agreed with our report cards and asking for a spare to share with family.

As we left the parking lot, one man came up to us and thanked us for giving him hope.  He said that while lots of groups go to Reno or Vegas to do outreach, they rarely take the time to go out into the small towns and rural areas.  But we were there, and he took it as a sign that good news was right around the corner.

Tomorrow we head east to the towns of Lovelock and Elko, where we will gather with nursing students to watch the final Presidential debate.  Eventually, by November we will have hit 11 Nevada cities…and headed east to Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Maine.

The National Nurses Organizing Committee (NNOC) today kicked off a national road show and outreach campaign designed to inform voters about the healthcare proposals of both leading Presidential candidates.  5 swing states will be targeted before the election for this healthcare outreach.

As one nurse from St. Mary’s Medical Center Reno put it, “Our patients are voters too, and we’re here to get them the information they need.”

The road show hits 11 different Nevada cities stops this week-everywhere from Reno to Elko to the Shoshone Reservation-with a striking wrapped bus featuring the nurses’ report cards on Obama and McCain.  Next week, the bus turns left and heads to Ohio, Pennsylvania, Manchester NH and Bangor ME (along with a visit to healthcare hero Eric Massa, running for Congress in New York.)

The RNs will hand out a version of the report card at stops along the way, and mail a different version to both RNs and voters around the state.  Nurses and labor activists from across the country will follow the mail with phone calls to a targeted list largely composed of nurses and voters who are likely to want healthcare information, particularly non-partisan women.   The campaign will be supported by advertising in the local areas the bus is visiting.  The report cards gives Obama a B+, McCain an F, and calls on all candidates to support HR 676, and which guarantees healthcare with a  single-payer system like Medicare for All.

Donna Smith, a star of the movie SiCKO and now a healthcare organizer for NNOC (and their sister union, the California Nurses Association), commented on the first day:

Nurses shared their report card for the candidates where they rate Sen. Obama’s plan better thatn Sen. McCain’s plan because Obama improves access to care while McCain’s plans to tax employer-based healthcare benefits and may cause as many as 20 million more people to lose access to coverage and care.

Out on the sidewalks, citizens welcomed the chance to talk with the nurses on a cool fall day.  One young man became angry when he thought the nurses were representing the health care industry — “No, I don’t want to talk to you.  i owe the healthcare industry thousands…”  

But he stopped and listened when told the nurses are advocating HR676, the National Health Insurance Act — single payer healthcare for all.

The road show will undoubtedly bring some surprises — as the nurses take their message far and wide.  But the trust patients feel for nurses clearly softened even the most campaign-message-weary.  Citizens know who speaks the truth and who has a hidden agenda.  

And during these last weeks of what has been a two-year long presidential campaign cycle, nurses break through the din of attack ads and economic shell shock with a clear, clean message:  healthcare is a basic human right that we can and should provide one another.  It’s in the nation’s best interests.

Like the young man Donna talked to, many many Nevadans are hurting economically-which makes this the right message for the right time.  Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of NNOC and CNA was thinking of patients like that one when she asked “If We Can Nationalize Banks, Why Not Health Care?”:

Through the simple, cost effective approach of improving and expanding Medicare to cover everyone, the U.S. could effectively nationalize the financing of healthcare delivery, a single-payer system, while leaving intact the most private system of hospitals and doctors. … If it’s good enough for every other industrialized country, if it’s good enough for the speculators and CEOs who have mortgaged our financial security, it ought to be good enough for the rest of America.

Indeed.

This year’s extended primary just might be great for healthcare reform as the Clinton campaign’s failure may have killed off the terrible idea of insurance mandates.  She ran on it, and lost–just like Arnold did in California last year.

If so, great news all around.  Working people, already struggling, will not face the prospects of having their wages garnished to pay off Blue Cross’ inflated premiums, overhead, and denials.  Healthcare reformers can focus their work towards enacting genuine solutions, rather than fighting off this insurance marketing scheme masquerading as health care policy.  And all of us can debate the real issues at hand here, like the new report finding the number of underinsured is spiking as our healthcare system continues its death-by-insurer spiral.

We’ll take a look at this and updates from single-payer movement below!

The big political advantage of health insurance mandates (laws forcing people to buy private insurance, no matter the cost or quality) is that insurance companies love them, and can create big coalitions of business-friendly groups that seem safely centrist but also reasonably effective.  They seem so dang politically viable.

But the Wall St. Journal points out they’re not and argues that Clinton’s Exit Deals Setback to the Push for Health-Care Mandates

Sen. Hillary Clinton’s exit from the presidential race will deal a blow to supporters of a key element in the tussle over universal health coverage: the idea that all Americans be required to buy or have health insurance.

After gaining considerable political ground, especially at the state level, the concept has suffered other setbacks lately, too. Despite years of entrenched political opposition to the idea of a mandate, it was a key part of the 2006 universal health care legislation enacted in Massachusetts and of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan to overhaul health care in that state….

The Schwarzenegger plan, though, failed this year, in part because unions and business groups objected to its individual and employer mandates. In Massachusetts, results have been mixed. While the overall plan has cut the number of uninsured adults in that state by roughly half, the state authority responsible for overseeing the program has exempted nearly 20% of uninsured residents because it has deemed they can’t afford the policy premiums on offer.

The California plan died when the public and legislators learned that nurses and labor unions were strongly opposed to the idea-and that their wages could have been garnished or a lien put on their home.  This same strategy will kill similar proposals nationally.  It is generous to call Massachusetts’ experiment mixed; check out Dr. Steve B’s more informed comments.

There are a number of problems with mandates.  On a macro level, they make genuine healthcare reforms-single-payer-impossible by showering for-profit insurers with millions of new customers and billions in new revenues and subsidies.  On a micro level, they trap patients into this broken system and saddle them with junk insurance that will drain their bank accounts only to offer them no protection in the case of a health crisis.

A new study today elaborates on this very problem of underinsurance:

About 25 million Americans – or approximately one of every five adults younger than age 65 with health insurance – did not have sufficient coverage last year to shield them from financial hardship if they ended up in the emergency room or were seriously ill, according to a new study to be released on Tuesday by the Commonwealth Fund.

I actually think that number is really low, but at least it focuses our attention on this:

As the nation debates how best to improve its health care system, including how to insure the increasing number of Americans without coverage, policy makers also need to discuss the quality of available coverage, said Karen Davis, the president of the Commonwealth Fund.  “Lack of insurance is only part of the problem, as even the insured have serious gaps in coverage,” she said.

Meanwhile, hilarity ensues as The head of Blue Shield of California begs health reformers: “Stop demonizing health plans.”  I don’t think so.

Chellie Pingree is about to become a great Congresswoman from Maine, and she is running on a single-payer platform.  Rose Ann DeMoro from the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee,  finds a gold rush town that symbolized our healthcare crisis.

Elsewhere, a writer in the Tennessean reminds us why we don’t have single-payer healthcare…the war…and the trend of getting married for health insurance continues.

Finally, Elizabeth Edwards, well, um, eviscerates John McCain’s so-called health care plan.  Snap!

In an extraordinary convention just concluding in Puerto Rico, here’s what you didn’t hear from Andy Stern’s paid PR blitz.  SEIU was under siege throughout by protest encampments of the popular Puerto Rican Teachers’ Union, responding to SEIU’s raid of the island’s largest  union– during a strike to improve horrific educational conditions.  

Inside the convention, to the detriment of the overall labor movement,  Stern successfully squashed  the internal dissent by SEIU’s democracy activists, thereby further concentrating power in himself.  The CEO model.

And in an extraordinary development, Stern announced that  SEIU is basically doing away with labor reps in favor of outsourced call centers…which makes sense, in that if you sign no-strike promises to your employer, why would you need to mobilize your members?  

There’s more!  SEIU is continuing its war against state and national RN unions by now picking up John McCain’s frame of attacking “government-run healthcare” as their latest salvo against the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (AFL-CIO).  If anyone doubted SEIU’s willingness to sell out genuine healthcare reform in a second, there it is.

Details below…

Juan Gonzalez and Democracy Now note that SEIU is trying to colonize the independent Puerto Rican teachers’ union in the midst of a historic  strike-and hope to do the same to other Latin American unions.  Solidardad no mas?  Read the background here or watch the video here about why SEIU was facing a protest encampment by Puerto Rican teachers .  Gonzalez:

I think that the key thing here is that the teachers’ union is the largest and most militant union in Puerto Rico and has always been, and the efforts of SEIU earlier this year when the teachers were in the middle of a major battle and a strike with the government to step in, in essence, and to try to take over or raid the leadership of the union, has created enormous reverberations throughout the labor movement in the United States, as well as in Latin America. I think, in fact, one of the most interesting things was that Stern and Dennis Rivera announced before the convention started that they are going to begin a new effort from Puerto Rico throughout Latin America to build ties between the SEIU to build global unions. So, in essence, what SEIU is trying to do by gaining control of the teachers’ union and, in effect, the Puerto Rican labor movement is to then branch out into the rest of Latin America. Now, they insist that they’re not going to do it in a way that will hurt the autonomy or the democracy of those unions, but the record has so far-has not been too good in that way. …. But the fact that SEIU would have such a demonstration at its national convention shows that the contradictions are growing there.

Gonzalez also notes the irony of SEIU pretending to carry the banner of labor reform, while consolidating power in one problematic leader.  

And the reality is that SEIU has increasingly become a more centralized union in the way it operates, and it is increasingly, in terms of some critics, doing anything it can to grow, in terms of making arrangements or deals with political leaders to be able to expand membership in different parts of the country. So I think that this is an important or watershed moment, because the SEIU is leading the supposed reform movement within organized labor, when now the leaders of the reform movement are being challenged over the nature of their reform. And I think that this is the opening salvo in what’s going to continue to be an ongoing battle.

Labor journalist Steve Early also covers the contradiction of Andy Stern holding a convention in Puerto Rico-exactly while trying to bust the Island’s largest and most-beloved union!

Using the “mobile picketing” skills well honed during a ten-day strike by thousands of teachers in February, the FMPR delegation marched right up to a police check-point–two hundred yards from the meeting hall-and burst right through. The flying wedge took  several casualties along the way, from flailing  police clubs and attempted collars. They then made a successful dash for the front door of the building, which is bigger than an airline terminal.

The ensuing picket-line-composed of fleet-footed survivors of the race to get in-had a feisty David vs. Goliath feel to it. For more than two hours, the teachers walked, chanted, sang union songs, distributed leaflets, and displayed a big FMPR banner under the soaring arches of the! convention center entrance. The FMPR message was “Stop Union Raids” — one that SEIU has fervently embraced back home but only when the California Nurses Association is “raiding” SEIU, in which case it should stop immediately….

Apparently the reform and democracy activists within SEIU were squashed by Andy Stern.  One reports:

While obviously they wanted to go out on a high note, this convention will always have a cloud hanging over it, memorable for its unparalleled security, its level of doublespeak, its stomping on free speech, and now its marred election process.

Meanwhile, SEIU actually told the New York Times that they are doing away with labor reps, the people who walk the halls of facilities and organize workers.  Instead?  Call centers.  “Please hold if you want to stand up to the boss.”  This is an extraordinary development, and one that undermines genuine worker power.

As 2,000 convention delegates gather in Puerto Rico, the Service Employees International Union is about to jettison a time-honored union tradition – having members go to their union representatives with their questions and grievances.  The delegates are expected to vote to have union members rely on call centers instead to handle their problems.

But some union leaders and members complain that the call centers would hurt the union and its members.  Sometimes you can’t get through to these centers,” said Eva Lozada, a home-care worker from Oakland, Calif. “It’s like talking to an A.T.M. This will be bad for the union.”

Hilariously, SEIU’s latest attack on the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee is the same one John McCain launches at Barack Obama: supporting “government-run healthcare”.

In a mailing to CNA/NNOC members this week, SEIU blasts CNA/NNOC for supporting a “government-run health care system.” McCain has used almost identical language to disparage Obama’s proposals for healthcare reform on an issue that will be a major focus of the fall campaign.

“By carelessly and cynically adopting the McCain language, SEIU is not only showing its contempt for the majority of Americans who have told pollsters that the government should guarantee healthcare for everyone as a solution to the healthcare crisis that has put so many of our families at risk.

“They are also giving aid, comfort, and ammunition to Sen. McCain whose own healthcare plan would be a disastrous continuation of the dismal and failed status quo,” said CNA/NNOC co-president Malinda Markowitz, RN….

To obtain sweetheart deals with employers, SEIU has “routinely sacrificed patients,” CNA/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro noted. She cited, for example, an agreement with California nursing home operators under which SEIU agreed to back legislation impeding patients’ rights to sue over nursing home abuses and oppose reforms to require better staffing for patient safety. SEIU also joined with the New York hospital industry to endorse the closure of hospitals and nursing homes.

Another independent nurses union-New York Professional Nurses Union-calls on all RNs to resist SEIU, due to their terrible track record of representing RN issues.  They write in an open letter about their experiences with SEIU:

1199/SEIU has a top-down leadership structure with very few RNs in top leadership positions.

We negotiated strong contract language only after we left 1199, including minimum nurse/patient ratios and a prohibition against all mandatory overtime.  

We became an independent union in order to gain control over our own bargaining and our own professional lives.  No union can represent the interest of registered professional nurses better than a nurses union.  Nurses need a union of nurse, by nurses and for nurses.  

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