(CNA joining the AFL-CIO over the SEIU or staying unaffiliated is a big deal. – promoted by juls)
Synergy = Momentum! Yesterday the 75,000 members of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee joined the AFL-CIO. No big deal you think? Wrong. The 325,000 RNs now consolidated in the labor movement have become a corps of committed activists for guaranteed healthcare on the single-payer model. Don’t underestimate them-especially as SiCKO continues to roil the national debate over healthcare.
Cross-posted at the National Nurses Organizing Committee’s Breakroom Blog, as we organize to make 2007 the Year of GUARANTEED Healthcare.
Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the 75,000-member nurses’ union, said that after a century as an independent union, the nurses joined the AFL-CIO because of what they see as unprecedented momentum for comprehensive health-care reform. She said her union opposed any reforms that would leave private insurers as the system’s gatekeepers and chose the AFL-CIO because of its vote this year to support a single-payer system under which one entity would finance all health care.
“You can’t achieve a national health care system without the labor movement. It’s never happened in any country,” said DeMoro, whose union has members outside California through its national group, the National Nurses Organizing Committee. The move gives the AFL-CIO 325,000 registered nurses as members.
Don’t underestimate that. The voice of America’s working people is joining the fight for the single-payer model of healthcare. This means millions of activists for single-payer, it means that politicians on the payroll of the insurance industry will know they’re crosswise with working people, it means that the single-payer solution moves into the mainstream as the only proposal that has a solid constituency pushing for it. Even Mitt Romney, by contrast, seems to be running from his Massachusetts mess. Read the AFL-CIO blog here.
The timing could not be better, as SiCKO continues its amazing impact on the American psyche-before it’s even being released. Is there another movie that’s had a greater impact a month before it debuts?
Conservatives are in a t-i-z-z-y. (My favorite line, from a right-wing activist in this article: “what is sicko about both the California Nurses Association statement and the Michael Moore movie is the low level of understanding of our health care system that both reveal.” So bitter.)
Google news finds 3,126 articles already written. Keywords there include “Moore fever,” “rock star,” “revolutionary,” and “hottest ticket in Cannes.”
The New York Times declares that SiCKO has already given us a new set of talking points for healthcare…and quotes economist Uwe Reinhardt saying, “My point is we are on the verge of a populist reaction to the health system. The American people are on the point of being fed up.”
Just what this social movement needed!
PS–SiCKO movie posters here.
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. You can help the fight by sharing your story about surviving the healthcare industry [http://www.guarantee….]