All posts by California Nurses Shum

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Happy Mary Seacole Day–the Mother of Social Justice Nursing

Today, May 14th, is the 119th anniversary of the passing away of Mary Seacole, the Mother of Social Justice nursing.

RNs now celebrate Mary Seacole Day as part of National Nurses Week-and as the day we honor the social justice aspect of the work of nurses.   Mary Seacole remains an important inspiration for the national nurses movement being built by CNA/NNOC (California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee), which focuses on improving patient care and safety in hospitals and on bringing this country the guaranteed, single-payer health care that our patients deserve.  

Mary Seacole’s  vision of caring equally for patients regardless of their ethnicity, nationality, or social class established the ideals  social justice nursing, and her belief that bureaucracy should not interfere with patient care is as relevant today as it was during her lifetime.  Moreover, her career laid an important foundation for nursing practice theory, and many procedures she helped develop continue today.

Mother Mary, as she was sometimes known, lived an extraordinary life that touched many patients.   She was born in  1805 in Jamaica of mixed-race descent, and overcame both racism and sexism in a career dedicated to advocating and caring for patients in dire circumstances.  Her own mother was a Creole healer, who passed her skills on to Mary.  After spending many years establishing hospitals in the Americas and dealing with a cholera epidemic in Jamaica, she was blocked from joining the nursing efforts of Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War, due to racial discrimination.  As Mother Mary wrote:

Doubts and suspicion rose in my heart for the first and last time, thank Heaven. Was it possible that American prejudices against colour had some root here? Did these ladies (at Florence Nightingale’s hospital) shrink from accepting my aid because my blood flowed beneath a somewhat duskier skin than theirs?

But nurses are nothing if not resourceful, and, rather than give up, Mother Mary travelled on her own to the war, and practiced nursing under incredible conditions-in the heat of battle, on the battlefields, rather than miles away, where the British hospitals were.  She founded her own nursing corps and her own hospital to deal with the needs of her patients.

Although Mother Seacole was forgotten for many years, this kind of heroism could not be repressed forever, and she was recently voted the Greatest Black Briton. in addition, the headquarters of the Jamaican Nurses Association is named after her.  Today, May 14, on Mother Seacole Day, part of Nurses Week, RNs across the world celebrate her values and her achievements.  

Happy Mary Seacole Day!

Health Care

SEIU Violence=Dark Day for Labor Movement

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Andy Stern’s SEIU International has gone and proven why RNs want nothing to do with.

Even though they’re providing the evidence for all the critiques of CNA/NNOC, today is a dark, dark day for the labor movement.  Last night, in Dearborn Michigan, at an annual conference of union activists, sponsored by the non-partisal Labor Notes SEIU resorted to violence to get their messages across.

I will link to the release and pictures after the release.

I’m sure SEIU will come on here with some crazy spin justifying their violence, but please first answer these questions:

1. Will SEIU pay the bill of the hospitalized worker?

2. Will Andy Stern promise to renounce violence?

3. Will you aplogize to all involved?

4. Will we see the same tactics in other venues?

I ask everyone reading this to go look at these two pictures: here and here.

That is the face of modern-day union thuggery.  

And now I’m posting below the press release put out by Labor Notes.  They only have a short blurb up on their site so far, but this release has been circulating, and I am going to post the whole thing:

April 12, 2008

SERVICE EMPLOYEES UNION ATTACKS LABOR GATHERING- CONFERENCE-GOERS ASSAULTED

Dearborn, MI-The Service Employees International Union turned their dispute with the California Nurses Association violent by attacking a labor conference April 12, injuring several and sending an American Axle striker to the hospital.

A recently retired member of United Auto Workers Local 235, Dianne Feeley, suffered a head wound after being knocked to the ground by SEIU International staff and local members. Other conference-goers-members of the Teamsters, UAW, UNITE HERE, International Longshoremen’s Association, and SEIU itself-were punched, kicked, shoved, and pushed to the floor. Dearborn police responded and evicted the three bus loads of SEIU International staff and members of local and regional health care unions. No arrests were made.

The assault took place at the Labor Notes conference, a biennial gathering of 1,100 union members and leaders who met to discuss strategies to rebuild the labor movement.

David Cohen, an international representative of the United Electrical Workers, asked protesters why they came. He said one responded, “they told us just to get on the bus.” The protesters included several members with young children, who had to be ushered away when SEIU tried to force their way into the conference banquet hall. Protesters were targeting Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the AFL-CIO-affiliated CNA. DeMoro was scheduled to speak but declined to appear after threats were made against her union’s leadership.

Despite being welcomed to the conference earlier in the day-and given space to debate supporters of the CNA and the National Nurses Organizing Committee about neutrality organizing agreements-SEIU international and regional staff shouted down speakers at workshops and panels throughout the event.

“Labor Notes has always been a space for open debate, but when a union decides to engage in violence against their brothers and sisters, we draw a line,” said Mark Brenner, director of Labor Notes. “Violence within the labor movement is unacceptable and we call on the national leadership of SEIU, including President Andy Stern, to repudiate it.”

For more information, contact Chris Kutalik 313-378-2588 or Mischa Gaus 773-627-3205  

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New Low in SEIU International’s Campaign of Harassment

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This is a new low.  

Two of our female board members received harassing visits at their homes yesterday by some of the (male) SEIU staffers who have come to California in recent days.

I am posting the release below where the nurses explain what happened.

RN Leaders of California Nurses Association/NNOC Demand Andy Stern Immediately Cease SEIU’s Harassment and Stalking of Nurses at Home and on Patient Care Floors

Service Union Staffers Went to Homes Thursday of CNA Leaders

The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Association today condemned the Service Employees International Union for targeting CNA/NNOC leaders and members with threats and intimidation, stalking them at home and in patient care units at hospitals.

In a statement today, CNA/NNOC-the nation’s largest RN union– demanded SEIU International President Andrew  Stern “immediately renounce the actions of SEIU staff and cease and desist these despicable attacks against anyone who speaks out against his pro-corporate agenda.”

“SEIU’s behavior, sending swarms of staff to threaten women in their homes, is especially disgraceful, and another illustration of their contempt for a predominantly female profession that they treat as chattel in so much of their activity, including trying to force RNs into his union,” said CNA/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro.

Roving bands of SEIU staff, four or five at a time, arrived on the doorsteps of at least two CNA/NNOC female Board members in Southern California Thursday, with video cameras to film their abusive exploits.

Debbie Cuaresma, RN, was confronted by five SEIU staffers chanting they were “from another union and another state,” who harassed her and her daughter. Margie Keenan, RN saw four SEIU staff members arrive at her door, yelling epithets and screaming at her.  Both called the police; the SEIU staff ran off before the police arrived.

Subsequently, Keenan learned that SEIU staff had first showed up in her nursing unit at Long Beach Memorial Hospital searching for her, and asking a co-worker where to find her.

‘I will not be intimidated by bullies.’

“I was home alone. Four people were staring at me through the window.  When they saw me they started screaming and trying to scare me. I called the police and they ran off,” said Keenan.

“I am a leader of  CNA/NNOC. I am proud of my organization, and I will always stand by it in our common goal of fighting for my patients and my colleagues. I will not be intimidated by bullies hired by (SEIU President) Andy Stern.”

Cuaresma also expressed outrage, saying “I am appalled that five bullies would come to my house with cameras and hurl abuse at my daughter. I believe this to be nothing less than a violation of my family’s privacy.”

“Union membership is about collective democracy. Nurses decide they need a union and then choose the union of their choice,” Cuaresma said. “We will continue to give voice on behalf of our patients and we will never be intimidated in our struggle to defend our ratios and  our hard-won benefits. Stern should rethink his strategy – he will not intimidate me or the CNA.”  

Thursday’s attacks on CNA/NNOC Board members are the latest escalation by the Service Employees Union which has in internal conversations bragged about its intent to “destroy” CNA/NNOC for challenging SEIU’s practices which the RNs say compromise patient safety, erode RN standards and professional practice, and undermine workplace and union democracy.

Also on Thursday, CNA/NNOC obtained a letter from an  SEIU staffer who resigned in disgust with the behavior of SEIU International and quoted a top SEIU official bragging of plans “targeting ten to fifteen C.N.A. bargaining units.”

SEIU’s corporate partnerships compromise patient safety

Perhaps the most egregious behavior of SEIU International, says CNA/NNOC are its deals with corporate hospitals and nursing homes, sacrificing patient safety for agreements to help it recruit more SEIU members.

For example, SEIU has signed pacts with nursing home operators in California and Washington state agreeing to lobby for the nursing home chains. Under the 2003 California deal, SEIU agreed to oppose legislation requiring nursing homes to provide enough staff  to keep patients safe and healthy, and to not report health care violations to state regulators except when required by law.

Five years later, according to a report cited in the Los Angeles Times this week, despite increased state funding for nursing homes, the direct result of SEIU lobbying, nursing homes are spending less in California on direct patient care, and reports of patient mistreatment have shot up 38%.

Similarly, in partnership with hospital corporations, SEIU lobbied in California against the RN-to-patient minimum ratio law, and worked to erode the law after it was enacted.

In New York, SEIU joined with the Greater New York Hospital Association in supporting the closure of more than a dozen hospitals and nursing homes, proudly issuing a joint statement that “We are surely the only hospital association and health-care workers union in the history of the United States to support a process that could lead to the downsizing of our own industry.”

Treating RNs as chattel

SEIU International is also seeking to retaliate against CNA/NNOC for opposing its top down deal with Catholic Healthcare Partners in Ohio. The employer picked SEIU as its chosen union to represent RNs and other employees without a single signed union card, and CHP and SEIU agreed to prevent employees from discussing the rigged election that resulted from the deal.

SEIU and the employer called off the election after the deal was exposed when it became apparent there was little or no support from the employees.

“What nearly occurred in Ohio was a marriage arranged by a paternalistic employer worried about losing control of its workers and a paternalistic union that agreed to take over the workers’ management in the employer’s interest. It was a business arrangement by men in which women are objects of trade rather than trading parties,” DeMoro said

.

For more information about  SEIU’s efforts on behalf of employers, see www.ServingEmployersInsteadofUs.org .  

Health Care

SEIU International’s Latest, Dangerous Corporate Partnership

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A major reason for the increasing controversy surrounding SEIU International has been their lack of commitment to genuine healthcare reform-and in fact their active attempts to undermine and sink patient-centered, single-payer reforms.  

Progressive elements in the labor movement (and their own union) have long been aware of this problem, as have healthcare and single-payer activists around the country.  

This story is now entering the wider public discussion as SEIU International embarks on new partnerships with corporate America and, all too often, Republican power brokers.  We’ll take a look, below, at their latest partnership, this one with the National Federation of Independent Business and the National Association of Realtors, to support a bill that hurts patients in the name of increasing insurance corporation profits-and, perhaps, winning employer sanction for SEIU organizing.

…for more background, please visit the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee’s new site, ServingEmployersInsteadofUs.

 

Jeffrey Young in the Hill newspaper this morning unveils the new partnership:

A bipartisan group of senators, with the support of small-business and labor union lobbyists, on Wednesday unveiled legislation they said would go a long way toward expanding healthcare coverage for the largest segment of the uninsured… the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) and the National Association of Realtors (NAR) to develop the legislation. …[to]  break a deadlock that has stalled past efforts to facilitate access to health benefits for small-business owners, their employees and the self-employed… in addition to the business groups, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has endorsed the bill.

What does  the bill do?

The legislation would combine annual tax credits up to $2,000 per worker for small-business owners and $3,600 for the self-employed with state- and federally based insurance pools designed to spread risk for insurers and reduce premiums for workers.

Please note that these tax changes to encourage more people to purchase private, for-profit insurance products are the basis of the healthcare proposals of both George Bush and John McCain.  These policies are widely disparaged by most healthcare reform activists because they further entrench the insurance industry in the delivery of care, will lead to greater profits for the insurance industry at the expense of patient care, and make it that much harder for our nation to ever achieve the guaranteed, single-payer healthcare reform we desperately need.

Here’s what right-wing Senator Mike Enzi had to say about the proposal:

 Asked about the Durbin-Snowe bill, a spokesman said Enzi “welcomes bipartisan efforts to bring market-based solutions to the health insurance crisis that is hurting millions of families.”

“Market-based” health care solution is a Republican talking point that basically means, “let’s do everything we can to help insurance corporations and stop single-payer healthcare.”

This kind of selling out of healthcare reform is the same pattern SEIU International has engaged in across the country, most recently when Andy Stern put his credibility on the line to help Arnold Schwarzenegger pass a bill, with the support of insurance companies, that would have included enormous public subsidies to insurance corporations and a mandate that all individuals purchase their products,no matter the cost or quality.  The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organzing Committe, along with most of the labor movement in California, healthcare activists and progressive Democrats, defeated that bill by holding it to one single “yes” vote in the state Senate.

Unfortunately these type  of partnerships with corporate CEO’s and Republicans have become standard business practice for SEIU in recent years, as it looks to get new members through organizing employers instead of workers.

A few other examples:

1. In New York, SEIU and the New York State Hospital Association have long worked together to ensure that the Republicans control the state Senate This is a key reason why New York has not had a single-payer bill passed…bad for patients, but good for SEIU’s hospital partners.

2. This post documents SEIU’s partnership with Pfizer to sell Lipitor.  This is ethically and medically dangerous, as wellas representative of the reason that Registered Nurses historically have not wanted to join the SEIU.  RNs are patient advocates, and you can’t advocate both for patients and Pfizer.  One of the other, not both.

3. The Nation documents Stern’s partnership with Lee Scott, the CEO of Wal-Mart, in a PR coup for the embattled company, looking to turn around its reputation for denying healthcare to its employees.  The author notes Stern crossed a UFCW picket line to appear on stage with Scott, despite UFCW’s heroic efforts to organize Wal-Mart workers.

Health Care

4,000 Striking CNA/NNOC Nurses Fight for Patient Care

4,000 brave women and men, RNs from the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, are spending this week on the picket lines outside of Sutter Health Hospitals throughout Northern California, on a 10-day strike over patient care issues.  Let me tell you about it, and introduce you to some of the RNs, because this is an important strike for a re-energized American labor movement and a key moment for the nation’s battle for quality healthcare.

First up, of course, the nurses:

 

This is a long strike for any worker, but one that turns on the most basic issues of nursing and patient safety.  Sutter Health is, even by HMO standards, an outlier in their push to cut corners on patient care in order to bump up corporate profits.  You can’t argue with their success on either count.  In 2006, Sutter reported record profits of $587 million.  Much of those profits come from routinely understaffing their hospital units by denying meal and rest breaks to nurses.  As a practical matter, what this means is that if a nurse, in the midst of a 12-hour shift, decides to take her lunch hour…then her patients lose coverage.

Can you imagine that terrible ethical dilemma?  Grab a sandwich or make sure my sick patients are cared for?  Especially for nurses, who define their work as “patient advocacy?”

That’s why these nurses had to walk out and make a personal sacrifice for the good of their patients and their profession.

Sutter’s response?  To embark on a campaign of harassment, intimidation, and lies.  Read more about it here.  Sutter has threatened to fire strikers, cut off health benefits, has posted guards at nursing stations to glare at RNs, and has taken to regularly demonizing its own nurses in the press.

The good news?  Sutter foolishly picked a fight with a group of (mostly) women who are not easily intimidated…especially by some corporate hack who have shown they don’t care about patient care.

The better news?  This strike affirms the relevance of America’s labor movement to the key questions our country is undergoing.  This strike has been marked by deep public support and sympathy, with Sutter Health’s behavior roundly criticized by elected officials, the public, and the news media.  High-profile strikes like this that win over the public make it easier for other groups of workers to stand up for their own rights.  It’s worth noting that the recent increase in the numbers of unionized workers has largely come from the ranks of healthcare workers-and that CNA/NNOC is the nation’s fastest-growing union.

And the best news?  The nurses of Sutter Health are demonstrating the way forward in our country’s struggle for guaranteed healthcare.  A major reason our health system is so dysfunctional is that corporations like Sutter Health have rigged the system and treat patients as profit-makers, not as human beings.  If we can win patient safety advances at Sutter, we can win them across the country-especially if we inspire the nation’s nurses to continue taking their patient advocacy from the bedside to the statehouse and even to the streets.

If these nurses inspire you, why not call the CEO of Sutter, Pat Fry at 916 286 6752 and tell him it’s time to settle with the nurses!

…cross-posted at the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association’s Breakroom Blog, as we fight to bring about guaranteed healthcare on the single-payer model…

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Sham “Company Union” Stopped–Major Victory for Nurses, Patients, Labor

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This week in Ohio there was a major victory for democratic, member-led, social justice unionism.  A hospital chain hand-picked a union, SEIU, which is known for being friendly to employers, and attempted to impose this company union on employees without a democratic process or any show of support among workers.

Local nurses, together with the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association, started an effort to block this anti-democratic, top-down deal and were successful–in a major victory for RNs, patients, and healthcare reform.

Story below the flip

You can read more in the Chicago Trib, or from the California Nurses Association, below.  

A bit of background: The Service Employees International Union is known for “partnering” with major corporations–whether that’s Wal-Mart on healthcare reform, nursing home companies on blocking nursing home reform, or their own employers, including HMOs and hospital chains.  When they partner with their employers, they agree to work together for the good of the company, which puts the needs of members second to the needs of the employers, and ends their ability to advocate for social justice and truly progressive reforms, including single-payer healthcare.  

This is a danger to the entire labor movement, and the main reason SEIU bolted from the AFL-CIO a few years ago.

But this extraordinary story–which included having the hospital chain actually file the papers for the union–is a new step for SEIU, and fortunately one that has been stopped.

One journalist reports she was told, “It’s like the workers will have two bosses, and they pay dues to one of them.”

Here’s the full NNOC/CNA statement:

Hospital Chain and Hand Picked Union, SEIU, Forced to Cancel Rigged Election After Protests by RNs and Other Employees – ‘A Victory for Employees, Patient Care, and Union Democracy’

After public exposure and protests, the Catholic Healthcare Partners chain and its hand picked union, the Service Employees International Union, today cancelled rigged elections — called without a single sign of support from the employees — planned this week for 8,000 registered nurses and other employees at nine Ohio hospitals in Cincinnati, Lima, and Springfield.

“This is a significant victory for employee rights, patient care protections, and workplace democracy, and a huge setback for a hospital industry and SEIU that hoped to make this shoddy abuse of what should be a democratic process into a national model,” said Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association, which challenged the sham elections.

CHP and SEIU arranged the votes through a top-down deal that “turned decades of labor law rights for employees on their head and made a mockery of constitutional protections of free speech,” DeMoro noted.

With the collusion of the Bush administration’s National Labor Relations Board, the employer filed for the election without any showing of support for SEIU, and maneuvered to stifle opposition and block potential participation from any legitimate union, she said.

CHP even resorted to the extreme action of going to court to obtain an injunction to block NNOC/CNA RNs from talking to the nurses about their rights and their ability to stop the hospital from imposing an unwanted union on them, while the hospitals were also blocking employees from internal discussions about the rushed vote.

DeMoro sharply criticized CHP and SEIU, along with the labor board for “determining among themselves the destiny of a workforce that is primarily women. The chauvinism and arrogance of their behavior is appalling, and has received the repudiation it so richly deserved.”

“But their conspiracy of silence and the whole shoddy scheme fell apart when it was exposed to the light of day and the nurses and other employees became aware that they had alternatives to a union selected for them by their employer,” said DeMoro.  

“They pulled the election precisely because it was abundantly clear there was no support from the very employees for a union imposed on them by their employer and disgust with the underhanded abuse of their constitutional rights.”

The cancelled elections, DeMoro added, are a “huge blow to SEIU International’s corrupted approach to growth at the expense of the public interest or a democratic voice of the workers.”

“SEIU depends on the complicity and support of employers even without any indication of support from the workers they are pretending to represent. That’s not what unions should stand for, and it’s not democratic,” said DeMoro. She noted growing opposition from SEIU members across the nation, reflected on the website www.reformseiu.org.

Finally, DeMoro also criticized the role of the labor board. The planned CHP elections were a template for new rules proposed by the NLRB to sanction employers filing elections without worker support, a form of company unionism that the 1935 law creating modern labor law rights was intended to stop.

But the current NLRB, stacked with anti-union appointees by the Bush administration, “has been steadily gutting workers’ rights, and turning the board into a vehicle for suppressing worker democracy and rights rather than protecting them. This election, and the rules now proposed, are a critical component of that ominous trend,” DeMoro added.

Note: I am a healthcare activist with the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association.  We are the nation’s largest RN union, the nation’s fastest-growing union, and sponsors of state and federal bills for guaranteed healthcare on the single-payer model, aka Medicare for All

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Rose Ann DeMoro: What’s Next for Healthcare

The ramifications of the collapse of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s flawed healthcare bill will probably reach to the national level, as leaders and activists will study the lessons of why it failed and how to avoid making the same mistakes.

The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee was probably the first group to oppose the bill, and we did so based on the belief that handing more customers, revenue, and medical influence to insurance corporations would hurt our patients; this was a bad proposal strictly on the terms of public health.  Moreover, we warned early on that the financial projections would never “pencil out”–it’s simply not possible to protect out-sized profits for insurance corporations and to solve the healthcare crisis.  They’re mutually exclusive goals.

I want to share with you the thoughts of Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the CNA/NNOC, on the next steps for healthcare.

Over at California Progress Report, let’s start with DeMoro’s analysis of why the bill failed:

AB x 1 was rejected not because Californians and the legislature like the status quo or do not yearn for fixing our broken healthcare system. The bill collapsed because it was fundamentally flawed on its merits on access, quality, and cost.

Among our key concerns were the mandate forcing individuals to purchase insurance with no controls on costs or a minimum standard for benefits or quality, the failure to provide meaningful protection to families facing a huge spike in out-of-pocket costs, and the danger that the low employer mandate would encourage employers to drop current coverage.

Of course the solution to the healthcare crisis is to solve the healthcare crisis, and we can learn how by looking at the universal, non-profit, single-payer coverage common to nearly every other industrialized democracy:

Many the remarks by committee members during discussion on the bill bear particular note, including committee chair Sen. Sheila Kuehl’s comment that not voting for this bill “does not mean we prefer the status quo, any more than Gov. Schwarzenegger was saying he preferred the status quo when he vetoed SB 840,” a single-payer, Medicare-for-all style bill.

We concur with Sen. Leland Yee who noted, “the only way we can get true health care reform is with a single-payer process” that “is fair and makes sure everyone is covered.”

A challenge to healthcare advocates, and legislators, to immediately extend coverage to children:

In the interim, there is a short term alternative. Adopt AB x 1’s fee on hospitals reimbursed through higher Medi-Cal payments to hospitals proposed in the bill, and use the resulting federal money to expand coverage for children.

Health Care

The Insurance Industry Power Grab–CA and Nationally

Should government mandate the purchase of for-profit insurance products, backed up by threats to garnish wages or place a lien on homes?  Or should we move to a guaranteed healthcare system modeled on the single-payer financing that is working in Taiwan, Canada, and most of Europe?  

This very interesting debate is happening simultaneously at the national and state levels-because mandated insurance is the top priority of the insurance industry, and they’re pushing it everywhere they can.  

We’ll take a look below…cross-posted at the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association’s Breakroom Blog, as we organize for GUARANTEED healthcare on the single-payer model.

In California, Arnold Schwarzenegger and most of the state’s insurers have lined up with Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez to push a mandate law through.  Its future is uncertain.  

At the Presidential level, Sens. Clinton and Edwards are attacking Sen. Obama for declining to endorse their mandate.  Obama rightly argues that people don’t have health insurance not because they don’t want it, but because they can’t afford it.  A difficult argument to make in a sound-bite world, but the right one.

The big Schwarzenegger/Nunez healthcare compromise is going for a hearing and a vote before the Senate Health Committee tomorrow.  No doubt the insurance lobbyists are working overtime to call in their chits.  At least one paper, the San Jose Mercury News, argues the Governor is “misplaying” his hand and “making a bad bet” with his healthcare bill.  Agreed.  They state:

The governor’s proposed budget cuts, which will do considerable damage to a health care system already in crisis, are only exacerbating the political challenge of passing his reforms.

(This editorial has one major factual error-saying that insurance corporations oppose the Schwarzenegger/Nunez bill.  In fact, major CA insurer but one is backing the bill.)

New American Media, a coalition of ethnic news sources, lists the top 5 Reasons ABX11 is a sham, and even reps from the insurance industry thinks it could go down.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts residents are learning what it’s like to live where the purchase of junk insurance is mandated by the power of the state: it’s a kick in the groin:

THE NEARLY 300,000 Massachusetts residents who signed up for health insurance under the state’s new initiative are in for a rude awakening. They may now have some form of coverage, but many of them, even the very poor who used to get free care, are going to be socked with steep medical bills.

Simultaneously, the mandate debate continues to roil the Presidential.  I’ll point out what Sen. Obama won’t–that an individual mandate is the top priority of the insurance industry right now, and that it will end our chance to achieve guaranteed, single-payer healthcare, by giving insurance companies more power and degrading group purchase of insurance.

And Ian Welsh just wants everyone to repeat after him: single-payer is cheaper than what we’ve got now (or would get under mandates.)

Lets not forget that small businesses across the country are being forced into bankruptcy by predatory insurance corporations protecting their huge health insurance profits.  We want more of that?

UPDATE: Please keep an eye out for the announcements from several major California unions that they oppose ABX1.1!

Health Care

Guaranteed Healthcare Update, Nevada to America

Healthcare’s the hot topic in Nevada…California…insurance industry profit reports…and everywhere!

..cross-posted at the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association’s Breakroom Blog, as we organize for GUARANTEED healthcare on the single-payer model.

First up, Marc Cooper writes at Off the Bus that the healthcare debate is getting hot in Nevada:

Obama also complained that his supporters were getting calls and fliers from Clinton supporters accusing his health care plan of leaving 15 million Americans uninsured. Obama brushed aside the charge and then proceeded to criticize President Clinton and Hillary Clinton for attempting health care reform “the wrong way” last decade. “They went behind closed doors to do it and allowed lobbyists the and health care industry to shape the plan and eventually kill it.”

The New York Times concurs:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, of New York, and John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator, said they would require all Americans to get coverage and would provide subsidies to that end, while Senator Barack Obama, of Illinois, says that as president he would require only children to have coverage. Mr. Obama’s plan would require employers to provide coverage or contribute to a new public program.

Note that word “requires.”  The Times is buying into the framing of the insurance industry, and their proposal to solve the healthcare crisis by an “individual mandate”-requirement-that everyone purchase expensive, for-profit insurance products.  

Remember, health insurance corporations increased their profits 9 percent in the first six months of the year-that’s $3.8 billion profit on $8.8 billion income.  That’s, what, $20 million in insurance industry profits from healthcare EVERY DAY!  No wonder we’re in crisis.   Because they’re making record profits.

Meanwhile, the coalition of the willing (to sell patients out for insurance corporation profits) is breaking up in California.  Yay!  

In New Mexico, Bill Richardson joins the list of people who dismiss guaranteed, single-payer healthcare, while the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce is licking it chops over individual mandates.

Health Care

Arresting Patients for Healthcare Advocacy!!

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Okay, this is an extraordinary photo of a beyond-the-pale moment: Steve Maviglio, the Deputy Chief of Staff to Fabian Nunez, the Speaker of the California Assembly, directing Capitol police to arrest an un-insured patient for speaking to the media about healthcare reform.  That’s Maviglio on the far right, and Jerry Flanagan from ConsumerWatchDog in the middle.

Conversations with press like this happen every day, every hour in the Capitol; it’s why the building exists.

But I guess most conversations aren’t on the subject of the insurance industry’s number one priority-which is to pass an “individual mandate” law.  And most conversations don’t happen as a gigantic fake healthcare reform bill seems to be careening to an ugly defeat.

Which is why most conversations don’t end with patients being cited for a misdemeanor.

We’ll tell what happened and why, below

…cross-posted at the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association’s Breakroom Blog, as we organize for GUARANTEED healthcare on the single-payer model.

It’s a good news-bad news situation.

The bad news is that the insurance industry has convinced some politicians on their payroll to hop aboard the individual mandate train, and pass a law requiring every person in the state to buy one of their products-no matter the cost or the quality.  The train’s rolling here in California, for a test run, before it goes national.

The good news is this bill is about to collapse, and this could well end this nasty little trend in healthcare reform, and open the door to replacing insurance companies altogether with universal, non-profit, single-payer coverage.  The kind that works in every other industrialized democracy.

Meet Ron Norton.  He’s on the far left in the picture, looking confused as to why Speaker Nunez thinks he’s a threat to the Capitol.  He’s been victimized by the Mitt Romney plan in Massachusetts, which is the basis for the Schwarzenegger, Clinton, and other individual mandate plans…and here’s what he’s got to say:

I’m Ron Norton, an adjunct professor of radiology and an administrator at a Quinsigamond Community College in Worcester, Massachusetts. But like 66% of our community college teachers, I’m considered an independent contractor and don’t get health insurance.

“After a few years of making about $21,000, I made closer to $40,000 last year because I’m also doing an administrative job. Under the Massachusetts insurance law my family won’t get subsidy because even though my wife has health insurance with her employer, her income is counted against my eligibility.

“Her small employer doesn’t offer family insurance. I imagine lots of California families are in the same situation.

“I’m 47 and have no health problems but the cheapest individual plan available in Massachusetts is $234 a month. That’s 6.8% of my salary. That “cheap” plan has a $2,000 per person pushing the cost up to 12.7% of my gross salary. Even if I bought the policy I still wouldn’t have affordable health care, and the number of doctors is very limited.

“I have a daughter, and it gets much worse if I want to insure her. The cheapest plan for the two of us is $440 a month, $5280 a year. That’s 11.6% of my income alone. The cheapest medium-range plan – without the huge deductibles – is $632 a month, nearly 20% of my own salary.

Details, details.  Doesn’t he know how much money these insurers have paid politicians to support their bill?

Hopefully, and apparently, not enough, as Capitol rumors are abounding now that the Schwarzenegger-Nunez bill is DOA.  Some reasons why:

First-the California Nurses Association has begun major advertising against it.  People generally people trust RNs more than insurance companies on healthcare issues.

Second-It’s becoming clear that voters don’t like this particular mandate. (Warning; .pdf, of poll.)

Third-California’s in a heap of budget trouble, and now is not the right time for multi-billion dollar public subsidies to already-profitable insurance corporations.

Fourth-the “insiders’ coalition” is breaking apart.  I mean, who really deep down likes insurance corporations?

Fifth-Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan is emerging as a total loser.

We might a few more arrests along the way, but we can see the light, and build a template for stopping fake healthcare reform and winning guaranteed healthcare. Or, as we sometimes call it, CheneyCare.

Everybody in, nobody out, nothing less.