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!

One more irony about the healthcare crisis: the politicians in charge of fixing it…are guaranteed healthcare through a system that is not just “single-payer” (in terms of being financed by the government instead of insurance companies), but beyond is actually government-run.

Nurses are running ads today in 10 Iowa newspapers pointing out that this means that Dick Cheney, with his heart trouble, would probably be dead now if he were an ordinary American forced to search for cardiac care in a thicket of mercenary insurers and heartless HMOs.  Cheney gets guaranteed healthcare; we get squat.

We’ll take a look below, also at some recent highlights from the healthcare movement…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.

The Wall St. Journal notes:

Vice President Dick Cheney would “probably be dead by now” if not for his federally funded health care, according to an eye-catching ad calling for universal health care that will run Monday in ten Iowa newspapers. The ad is union-funded by the California Nurses Association and its national arm, the National Nurses Organizing Committee, which represents 75,000 nurses.

You know you’ve succeeded when this happens:

The vice president’s office said the ad isn’t worth more than a no comment. “Something this outrageous does not warrant a response,” said Megan Mitchell, a spokeswoman for Cheney.

MarketWatch noted that it is medical professionals who are giving the idea of guaranteed healthcare new life.

Among the good news this time, is that the American College of Physicians is calling for an examination of how a single-payer system would work in the U.S.  This is a great move forward for one of the nation’s premier organizations of Doctors.  

While health-care reform may play second fiddle to the war in Iraq among voters this election season, it appears that the domestic issue is taking on new life thanks to medical-industry professionals….Welcome to the 2008 elections, where medical professionals are turning up the heat in favor of a universal, single-payer system that represents a radical departure from what most of the major presidential candidates are proposing. They know that such a system is a long shot at this point, but the numbers in their camp are growing.

Elsewhere in the drive for guaranteed healthcare…

…I’m not sure who Brad Warthen is–he blogs for The State newspaper in South Carolina-but he’s become one of the most eloquent voices in support of genuine healthcare reform.

…The Charleston (West Virginia) Gazette continues its impassioned stumping for single-payer…

We are building a grand coalition.  Meanwhile, who really likes the insurance corporations except for the politicians whose pockets they line (to let them win office, and guaranteed healthcare).

Did CNA just win a presidential debate?  The Washington Post thinks so.  We’ll take a look and more, cross-posted at the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association’s Breakroom Blog, as we organize to make 2007 the Year of GUARANTEED healthcare on the single-payer model.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that the Washington Post called my little union, the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, the “winners” of Sunday’s Presidential debate for our pro-guaranteed healthcare reform ads we ran and the National Journal lauded the ads for returning the problem of health insurance to the primary.  It’s not going to go away, and whoever the Democratic candidate is will have to decide: are you with insurers or patients (and labor)?

Around the webs, Cervantes looks at the economic argument for guaranteeing healthcare with single-payer financing, while In These Times looks at the momentum in Wisconsin for such a program.

Meanwhile, David Sirota notes the Bush administration threatens to retaliate against middle-class families who use government-sponsored healthcare through the S-Chip program.

And America’s war on Indians continues, this time through inadequate healthcare.

Finally, an editorialist at the San Jose Mercury News wonders how long we have to wait for single-payer?

To join the fight for guaranteed healthcare (with a “Medicare for All” or SinglePayer financing), visit GuaranteedHealthcare.org, a project of the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association.

George Bush has spoken: no guaranteed healthcare, not for kids, not for nobody.  Thank you Mr. Bush for putting your unpopularity behind the private insurance sector–just as their “individual mandate” laws in Massachusetts are running into trouble.  Bush’s veto provides the single-payer movement with the greatest strategic opening in memory.

All this and more in today’s Guaranteed Healthcare Update, cross-posted at the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association’s Breakroom Blog, as we organize to make 2007 the Year of GUARANTEED healthcare on the single-payer model.

It was on ideological grounds that George Bush vetoed the expansion of Medicaid to more kids: “My concern is that when you expand eligibility . . . you’re really beginning to open up an avenue for people to switch from private insurance to the government.”

We have the least popular President in a generation putting his moral weight behind the private insurance companies—and opposing the idea of society guaranteeing healthcare to all kids, and adults.

In the words of Pink, thank you, Mr. President.  This is our opportunity to sharply frame the debate: throw patients to the insurance industry wolves or fight for guaranteed healthcare?  Trust in George Bush and Blue Cross…or the medical systems working in every other industrialized nation in the world?  The more nurses, patients, and other guaranteed healthcare advocates can point out the links between Bush and the private insurance industry, the better off our movement is.  It’s a tragic veto, but a strategic gift we should all exploit.

Speaking of wolves, count Ron Wyden in: “’We’re right at the cusp of an ideological truce on health care,’ declares a beaming Ron Wyden.”  His truce is a massive expansion of the role of private insurers through a legal mandate to become their customer.  In other words… to the ideology of George Bush and Mitt Romney and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Ironically, the original individual mandate bill, RomneyCare in Massachusetts, is having trouble and legislators are rushing to tinker.  The big problem? “Massachusetts Senate President Therese Murray recently warned: ‘If we do not constrain health-care costs, the system we worked so hard to create and implement will collapse.’”  It is, of course, impossible to make the economics of healthcare work when you use 30% of care dollars to prop up an unnecessary private insurance sector middleman.  That’s why health care providers in Mass. are leading the fight against the program, with a petition saying, “the state is offering plans with skimpy coverage and little real health security…”

Elsewhere, Larry Summers shares a dark vision of how we’ll get to guaranteed healthcare: “Incrementalism is not enough, we need full and fundamental reform. But I suspect that Congress will do incremental reform for a while until it fails, and crisis forces radical change.”  Let’s work to skip the even-worse crisis part, because that’s a code word for patient suffering.

Finally, medical students are among the nation’s most committed healthcare reformers, and one drew up this great animation on single-payer.

To join the fight for guaranteed healthcare (with a “Medicare for All” or SinglePayer financing), visit with GuaranteedHealthcare.org, a project of the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association.

A major healthcare union is getting behind single-payer, while Arnold Schwarzenegger is pushing its exact opposite in California. 

All this and more in today’s Guaranteed Healthcare Update, cross-posted at the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association’s Breakroom Blog, as we organize to make 2007 the Year of GUARANTEED healthcare on the single-payer model.

Great news for guaranteed healthcare…the SEIU United Healthcare Workers West, a huge and powerful union, is endorsing Rep. John Conyers’ HR 676 the bill implementing a single-payer system in the U.S.  A powerful coalition is building behind this concept, now including hundreds of unions.

Unfortunately, Mitt Romney’s healthcare plan—-the exact opposite of HR 676–may be coming to California through the efforts of Arnold Schwarzenegger. (reg. req’d)  The California Nurses Association opposes this attempt to bandaid our healthcare crisis by shuttling more people into the arms of private health insurance corporations.  Among other reasons, it would be financially devastating for working- and middle-class people, and would give insurers even more control over medical decision-making, while jacking up their profits. 

Julie Pierce, profiled in SiCKO as a victim of these very insurance companies, after she lost her husband because his cancer treatment was denied, is emerging as an American hero and a tireless advocate for guaranteed healthcare.

On a related note, Los Angeles will not file charges against police who left a woman to die on a floor at a troubled hospital there.

Meanwhile, Maine is finding it difficult to reform healthcare and preserve profits for the insurance industry.

Finally, the fact that not even kids can get guaranteed healthcare in this country, is emblematic of the need for some politicians to start paying an electoral price for not taking this crisis seriously.

To join the fight for guaranteed healthcare (with a “Medicare for All” or SinglePayer financing), visit with GuaranteedHealthcare.org, a project of the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association.

Today we learn that Rudy’s hooked on OxyContin money…Krugman finishes off the myth about waiting times in nations with guaranteed healthcare…and TX nurses are on the rise!

All this and more in today’s Guaranteed Healthcare Update, cross-posted at the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association’s Breakroom Blog, as we organize to make 2007 the Year of GUARANTEED healthcare on the single-payer model.

*Rudy Giuliana was paid by Pfizer to help improve the image of OxyContin and steer prosecutions to street criminals instead of white-collar pushers.  All this while he emerges as probably the single candidate most hostile to healthcare reform and guaranteed healthcare.  That’s pretty sick.

Key quote from the article:

“This is one of Giuliani’s Achilles’ heels,” said Baruch College public affairs professor Doug Muzzio. “He was directly and intimately involved with a company that was in violation of law and morals and ethics. There are ways to frame the issue that resonate, that Rudy Giuliani is sacrificing the public weal for his own personal benefit.”

*If you’re not concerned about the influence of healthcare corporations on policy, read about the latest California scandal here.

*Meanwhile, Paul Krugman (reg. req’d.) points out that, “…The opponents of universal healthcare appear to have run out of honest arguments,” as he debunks the myth about waiting times in Canada and Europe.

*The eyes of Texas are upon their nurses, who are responding to the NNOC’s advocacy for safe staffing, guaranteed healthcare, and fair contracts with a surge of interest in unionization.  Nurse power!

*Winners of the “not so good on the details” prize are three legislators from Alaska who used the premier of SiCKO to push for a bill requiring…mandatory insurance for all Alaskans.  That’s right, requiring people to become customers of the same insurance corporations unmasked in the movie.

*Activist doctors call for Medicare 2.0.

*And finally, the Arkansas Times is not amused that Republican presidential candidate, and Arkansas Governor, Mike Huckabee blames Michael Moore—and other fat people—for our health care crisis.

To join the fight for guaranteed healthcare (with a “Medicare for All” or SinglePayer financing), visit with GuaranteedHealthcare.org, a project of the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association.

Californians will find this familiar, as the national political debate over healthcare reform might be coming down to giving up or selling out.  We’ll look at this and more in today’s guaranteed healthcare update, cross-posted at the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association’s Breakroom Blog, as we organize to make 2007 the Year of GUARANTEED healthcare on the single-payer model.

If today’s Washington Post is to be believed, Democratic Presidential Candidates are having internal debates about healthcare reform that can be summed up as: give up or sell out.  The sell out option—ripping up the safety net and letting every patient fend for themselves—seems to be losing so far. Instead, leading candidates are giving up, and choosing Mitt Romney-style plans that won’t solve the problem but will increase the role of the same private insurers who Michael Moore dimed out in Sicko.  Grrrr.  When did unworkable proposals become the “pragmatic” option?  Time for health care advocates to start pressuring candidates for real proposals.

Elsewhere, the San Francisco Chronicle compares the U.S. health care systems with single-payer systems around the world.  Hint: the U.S. doesn’t look too good 

In the same paper, Deborah Burger, RN, President of the National Nurses Organizing Committee & California Nurses Association, piles on with an op-ed about the ugly reality of waiting lines for treatment…in America, while author Ken Terry looks at how American employers are being disingenuous in their attempts to avoid the healthcare mess.

The healthcare blogosphere is loving Michael Moore’s smackdown of CNN, and is going Reagan-esque with demands to tear down the tottering symbols of the decrepit private health insurers. 

In Pennsylvania, Gov. Ed Rendell is trying to protect the profits of private insurance companies…and, of course, finds he isn’t left with enough money to tackle serious healthcare reform.  Coincidence or cautionary tale?

And finally, Tom Tomorrow dissects standard conservative responses to healthcare reform.

To join the fight for guaranteed healthcare (with a “Medicare for All” or SinglePayer financing), visit with GuaranteedHealthcare.org, a project of the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association.

(Let’s get this conversation on the front page (and in the RSS feed) – promoted by jsw)

Michael Moore’s SiCKO has now been out almost two weeks, and I’m beginning to find that for a number of us, it’s been a seminal event that has motivated people who were not previously involved in the issue to actually get up and raise some hell.

I like raising hell.  Don’t get me wrong, I really do.  But in cases like this, I like to win too.  And we need to win this one.

There are things we can learn from recent victories we’ve had that can be applied to the single payer health care fight.  On the flip, I’ll mention a few.

First, a few parameters for our discussion here.  There is a lot that traditional advocacy organizations and the unions have been doing, and should continue doing.  In particular, I am in awe of the California Nurses Association and its activities over the last month.  I’m going to assume that they will continue to do what they’re doing, and won’t discuss them much further.  I am much more interested in how we can harness the large progressive blogs and the new-wave net based organizations like DFA and MoveOn.

Second, I am both an activist and a technologist, and am most interested in what we will call “tech assisted local activism”.  The prototype of this was MeetUp: using web sites and related techniques to get people doing things in the real world with real people. We beat Pombo with tools like this.  I want a better understanding of what we did there that we can transfer to a more issue based campaign like this one.

Third, a lot of what we need to do I see already.  There are diaries just about every day on Kos and MyDD — typically, more than one.  I know for a fact that the many of the people who write them read Calitics.  On the whole, none of these diaries are getting the play I’d like to see them have.  Based upon things I’ve seen done by folks like Eden out of McNerney’s people, I know that it’s possible to get a lot more bang from our diaries than what we’ve been getting.  I’d like to see the group of us working together more closely to make that happen.

Forth, we need to get this going before the presidential silly season sucks all of the oxygen out of the issue, and while SiCKO is still drawing crowds.  That means training, and it probably also means making sure some of us start meeting with one another on a regular basis, and soon.

Those are the terms of reference, folks.  Now, what should we be doing about this?