16,000 Registered Nurses at 39 Catholic Health systems hospitals across California will strike this October 30th  in an urgent bid to improve patient safety standards at their facilities, especially as the swine flu comes barreling down upon us.

This strike marks a continuation of a months-long effort by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC) to raise alarms about inadequate H1N1 hospital safeguards, and patient sfety in general.  

In August, CNA/NNOC releaseda major report of a survey of 190 U.S. hospitals where RNs cited widespread problems with poor segregation of patients, lack of sufficient N95 masks, numerous hospitals where nurses have been infected, inadequate training for hospital staff, and punitive sick leave policies.

In particular, the RNs say, many hospitals continue to do a poor job at isolating patients with H1N1 symptoms and other steps to limit contagion, or provide sufficient fit-tested N95 respirators and other protective gear for healthcare workers and patients.

“Our hospital isn’t being proactive in preparing for the expected onslaught of H1N1 infected patients,” said Kathy Dennis, RN at Mercy General Hospital in Sacramento.  “We can’t get enough N95 masks, patients are not being properly isolated, and RNs are not being kept informed of the latest guidelines.  Last time I worked, It took me more than four hours to get masks when we ran out we ran out.  We must put the proper precautions in place now before flu seasons peaks or we will all be in serious trouble.”  

CNA/NNOC wants hospitals to formally adopt all CDC and Cal-OSHA guidelines to make them enforceable by CNA/NNOC contract provisions assuring the highest safety measures are met, are uniform, and consistently applied throughout the systems.

Another nurse put the problems this way: “When nurses are exposed to tuberculosis, the hospital notifies us. When nurses are exposed to head lice the hospital notifies us. Why then are we not told when we are exposed to H1N1? All staff have the right to know if they have been exposed in order to keep our patients from further unnecessary exposure,” said Carol Koelle, RN at St. Bernardine Medical Center in San Bernardino.

The Wall St. Journal reports:

The union decided to strike after “an onslaught” of patients admitted to hospitals made negotiations more urgent, said Jill Furillo, who heads union bargaining with Catholic medical facilities. She said the union was mainly striking over safety issues: “This is not really about money.”

The union is asking the health-care systems to create a monitor position to ensure that staffing ratios comply with California state mandates. The union also said it wants hospitals to stop a practice called “floating,” in which nurses are assigned to areas outside of their expertise, such as an emergency-room nurse being assigned to labor and delivery.

A union official also said a few hospitals are seeking salary freezes, which the union is fighting, and some hospitals have proposed increasing employee payments for health insurance.

The LA Times adds:

Nurses have been demanding more protection from the H1N1 flu all summer, an association spokesman said, but became increasingly concerned after a nurse died in July. Karen Ann Hays, 51, a cancer nurse at Mercy San Juan Medical Center in Sacramento, died July 17 of a severe respiratory infection, pneumonia and H1N1. Hospital officials could not confirm whether Hays, a triathlete and marathon runner, became ill at work.

While nurses have made a major focus on passing the Employee Free Choice Act, and removing the barriers that most RNs face in joining a union, this effort shows the power that a revitalized labor movement can have even before labor laws are-finally-reformed.

The responses by the hospitals to this strike should serve to make very clear why nurses had to take this difficult and brave step.  Their responses are: 1. Blame the messenger, 2. Deny patients need RN care, and 3. Cry poor.  All of which should serve to put both patients and nurses on notice that these facilities are in full denial mode.  More specifically:

1. The California Hospital Association spokesperson was trotted out to attack the nurses for daring talk about patient safety:

Jan Emerson, a spokeswoman for the California Hospital Association, said the union was “grandstanding” by raising the respirator issue.

2. A local spokesperson was charged with assuring patients that they don’t really need Registered Nurses:

Tobey Robertson, spokeswoman for Community Hospital of San Bernardino, said the hospital will take into account skill levels needed on the day of strike.   “You don’t always need RNs to replace RNs. It depends on the level of care,” she said.

3. Finally, patients were told by another local hospital spokesperson that they can’t afford safe care:

“Given the current economic environment and the challenges CHW faces, the CNA’s demands, if agreed to, would add to the ballooning cost of providing care and threaten our ability to meet our community’s needs,” the statement said.

Far and away the most exciting industry for the labor movement today is healthcare-and the air of historic change was in the San Francisco air this week as more than 1,200 registered nurses from across the country gathered to plan their coming merger…and to advance their patient advocate’s agenda of guaranteed healthcare on the single-payer model and of genuine labor law changes to allow every nurse to freely choose her union.  The RNs are members of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, and their guests from United American Nurses and Massachusetts Nurses Association.

The 1,200 nurses broke from their meeting to make a special house call to Dianne Feinstein, and deliver roses along with hand-written pleas for her to support the Employee Free Choice Act.  She’s in DC, but we’re sure she’ll get the message that we expect her to help nurses join unions and save lives.  That change alone will significantly improve our healthcare system.

Meanwhile:

In These Times reports on the coming RN SuperUnion and how registered nurses, together with the muscle of the AFL-CIO, will have the ability to inject a humane and pro-patient politics into our policy:

While lawmakers bicker and the public wades through a muddle of misinformation, the major nurses unions, particularly the California Nurses Association (CNA), are staking out bold positions on reform. Their efforts have culminated in a new union merger that seeks to align progressive nurses with other service workers as well as healthcare consumers.

As a critical link between physicians and patients, nurses occupy a pivot point in the reform debate. Alongside bread-and-butter campaigns on pandemic-flu preparedness and nurse-to-patient staffing ratios, the CNA has taken on universal healthcare as a labor issue, arguing that single-payer would not only serve patients’ best interest, but also make the entire system more economically viable.

The Wall St. Journal writes up how these pro-patient policies lead to nurses pushing Obama for better healthcare proposals:

At a conference for registered nurses in San Francisco, Geri Jenkins watched President Barack Obama’s televised speech with several others from the California Nurses Association. After the speech ended, the knot of nurses was left disappointed.

“You have to give him credit for standing up and trying to tackle the problem,” Jenkins said after it was over. “But it just needed to go a step further.”

Jenkins would have liked to see Obama’s plan place greater restrictions on how much insurance companies can charge consumers. Her 29-year-old stepdaughter, who was born with a heart condition, has gone without health insurance for a year because she could no longer afford the $7,000 annual catastrophic coverage.

Other nurses also felt the president’s proposals did not go far enough.

The San Francisco Chronicle let CNA/NNOC executive director sum it up:

“The problem with other solutions like the public option is that they leave in place the real problem: The insurance companies,” DeMoro told us.  

As the Washington Independent reports, those insurance companies are the subject of a new investigation by California Attorney General (and future and past Governor) Jerry Brown, after CNA/NNOC uncovered data that they reject on average 22 percent of all claims-and that jumps to 40 percent for the worst company, PacifiCare.

While the Christian Science Monitor notes the ongoing viability of the single-payer reforms nurses are dedicated to…it’s popular in the states and HR 3200 contains an amendment to empower states to that kind of experimentation:

The California Nurses Association was also instrumental in lobbying for an amendment, added by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D) of Ohio to a House version of the federal healthcare reform bill, that would remove potential legal impediments for states to pass single-payer bills by waiving federal exemptions that apply to employer-sponsored health plans from the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA)…. There are also strong prospects for single-payer healthcare in California, where the legislature has twice passed single-payer, only to have it vetoed both times by Governor Schwarzenegger.

Next week, we’ll be taking the fun to Pittsburgh where we will host the U.S. premiere of Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story at the national AFL-CIO convention, and use the occasion to throw a huge single-payer party

Check out more pix here.

(As a result of this report, Attorney General Brown has opened an investigation into insurance company practices.  Great, great work by the CalNurses. – promoted by David Dayen)

It’s time to stop talking about make believe death panels, and talk about the real ones.

Six of California’s biggest insurance companies have rejected more than one in five claims the past seven years — according to data the insurance giants, Blue Cross, PacifiCare, Kaiser Permanente, Health Net, Cigna, and Aetna report to the state Department of Managed Care.

Researchers from the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee analyzed data reported by the insurers to the California Department of Managed Care. From 2002 through June 30, 2009, the six insurers rejected 45.7 million claims — 22 percent of all claims.

For the first half of 2009, as the national debate over healthcare reform was escalating, the rejection rates are even more striking.

Claims denial rates by leading California insurers, first six months of 2009:

• PacifiCare — 39.6 percent

• Cigna — 32.7 percent

• HealthNet — 30 percent

• Kaiser Permanente — 28.3 percent

• Blue Cross — 27.9 percent

• Aetna — 6.4 percent

As the news got out to the media, the insurance bean counters fell all over themselves digging up explanations, denials, and justifications for their unjustifiable behavior.

From the Los Angeles Times, the Sacramento Bee, and other reports, you can see them scrambling to shift the blame to the doctors, to the hospitals, to the nurses for daring to criticize them.

Left hanging in the air is a bigger question. If the private insurers are not paying for care, why do we have private insurers?

While not every denial results in patient death or injury, far too many do. As CNA/NNOC co-president Deborah Burger put it, “Care denials have a human face, a real patient enduring unnecessary pain and suffering.”  

Cigna, for example, gained notoriety two years ago for denying a liver transplant to 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan of Northridge, Calif. and then reversing itself after protests organized by her family, her friends and community, CNA/NNOC, and netroots activists. Tragically the reversal came too late to save her life.

PacifiCare denied a special procedure for treatment of bone cancer for Nick Colombo, a 17-year-old teen from Placentia, Calif. Again, after protests organized by Nick’s family and friends, CNA/NNOC, and netroots activists, PacifiCare reversed its decision. But like Nataline Sarkisyan, the delay resulted in critical time lost, and Nick ultimately died. “This was his last effort and the procedure had worked before with people in Nick’s situation,” said his older brother Ricky.

In 2008, six days before RN Kim Kutcher of Dana Point, Calif., was scheduled to have special back surgery, Blue Cross denied authorization for the procedure as “investigational” even though the lumbar artificial disc she was to receive had FDA approval.

At the time of denial, which she calls “insurance hell,” Kutcher notes she had “already gone through pre-op testing, donated a unit of blood, had appointments with four physicians.” Kutcher paid $60,000 out of pocket for the operation and is still fighting Blue Cross.

Why do they companies deny claims? Because it pays.

Rejection of care is a very lucrative business for the insurance giants. The top 18 insurance giants racked up $15.9 billion in profits last year.

It’s also a reason why private insurers divert up to 30 cents of every healthcare dollar to overhead — much of it spent to support warehouses full of claims adjustors needed to deny care, to keep down their “medical loss ratio” or profits lost on approving claims.

So why aren’t these obscene, all too routine denials of claims — and ultimately care — more widely discussed in the national debate over proposed healthcare reform?  

The sad truth is there is little in the main proposals emanating from Congress and the White House to change these deadly practices.

Our nation remains the only one in among industrial nations to link access to healthcare to private profit.

That’s one reason for data like this:

Data released in late August by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, which tracks developed nations, found that among 30 industrial nations, the U.S. ranks last in life expectancy at birth for men, and 24th for women.

One way to end this disgrace is to unhinge care delivery to profiteering by expanding Medicare to cover everyone. Isn’t that the best way to finally end this disgrace once and for all?

Yesterday I was excited to announce that the SEIU California State Council has endorsed me in my race to represent California’s 10th Congressional District, a Northern California district encompassing parts of Contra Costa, Solano, Alameda, and Sacramento counties. With 700,000 members, SEIU is the largest labor union in California, and their ranks include a broad cross-section of working Californians, including social workers, nurses, classroom aides, security officers, college professors, homecare workers, janitors, and more.

Why I’m motivated to lead on single-payer health care, the Employee Free Choice Act, and green-collar jobs over the flip…

“With health care reform, affordable clean energy, and economic security for our nation’s families at the top of Congress’ agenda, we need leaders in congress who will be a powerful voice for working families in each of these important debates,” said Courtni Pugh, Executive Director of SEIU’s California State Council. “We know that John Garamendi will do just what he’s done in California – be an outspoken champion for people who work hard every day, for the elderly and people with disabilities who need a voice, for parents and their kids who deserve opportunities for a better future. We know John Garamendi won’t compromise our grandparents’ safety or our kids’ future.”

I want to take this opportunity to thank the SEIU California State Council for their important endorsement, and I want to let all of you know that when in Congress, I will continue to fight for progressive legislation that improves the lives of all Americans.

You will hear a lot from me over the coming months and years about the issues that have led me into public service, but given this most recent endorsement, I wanted to cover three issues that matter to working Californians: universal health care, the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), and advancing green-collar jobs.

Medicare for All

I support single-payer health care. In 1965 we figured out how to make health care work for everyone – or at least everyone over the age of 65 – it’s called Medicare. Polls have consistently shown that an overwhelming majority of seniors enrolled in Medicare are satisfied with the service provided to them. Medicare provides universal coverage for seniors, is cost-effective, and patients are able to choose their own doctors. Sure, it’s not perfect, but it’s a significant improvement over a profit-driven private health insurance industry that rewards early termination of coverage for patients in need of care and includes excessive overhead for advertising and administrative costs.

I also think healthcare reform this year must include the public option. As I’ve always said, if we don’t yet have the votes for truly comprehensive universal health care reform, we should not stand in the way of incremental health care reform, provided we are clearly heading down a path toward universal Medicare for All access. My longstanding advocacy on these issues as a state legislator, Insurance Commissioner, and Lieutenant Governor also led the California Nurses Association to endorse my run for Congress, and I am humbled to have the support of nurses.

The Right to Organize

I am also a proud supporter of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). As I explained at a labor rally in March:

“It is time for a change, because the working men and women of America and the working men and women of California have taken the short end of the paycheck for too long. In 1965, the CEOs had a ratio of 24:1 on their paycheck. What happened in the ensuing years? In 1980, it went to $42 for the CEO and $1 for working men and women. In 2006, what happened? It went to $364 for every dollar you earn.”

Approximately 60 million non-unionized Americans say they would join a union if given the opportunity, and when in Congress, I will work to make sure that working men and women have the opportunity to join a labor union without undue delay or fear of unjust termination.

What’s Good for the Planet is Good for Labor

I also believe smart government policy can help create new quality jobs, and with the ravages of global warming and pollution more apparent by the year, the time was yesterday to employ Americans in fields that make our economy more sustainable. Weatherizing buildings, constructing public transportation corridors, and installing wind turbines, solar panels, and other alternative energy sources have and will continue to create quality jobs. If our country is to maintain its status as the world’s innovator, if our country is to retain its economic competitiveness, then a robust investment in green-collar jobs must be a priority for our country.

I was happy to see President Barack Obama appoint Van Jones as his green jobs advisor, and I share his conviction that environmental advocates must focus on demonstrating the interconnectedness of environmental protection and job creation for the working class. And believe me, I am no stranger to this issue.

As a state legislator, I was the author of the first legislation proposing high speed rail in California, and under a proposition I authored (Prop 111), California generated billions of dollars for mass transportation. I also authored a bill that offered the first tax credit in the state for wind turbine construction, including the wind turbines that exist near Fairfield in Solano County. These projects represent the best of California, and the future of our economy. In Congress, I will continually stress the importance of an environmental agenda that works for everyone, including inner city and rural communities and communities of color.

As you may know, today we face an important filling deadline where we have to report contributions from supporters. You know where I stand on these issues, and I plan on addressing your additional comments and questions throughout the week. If you could spare even $5, $10, or $25, our campaign would be most appreciative. If you live in the area and would be interested in volunteering for a strong advocate for working and middle class Californians, please sign up on our campaign website. And of course, I’d love to see you follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Yesterday I was proud to receive the endorsement of SEIU. I would be honored to have your support today.

P.S. I also have a blog post up on Calbuzz about offshore oil drilling with the California Department of Finance’s Tom Sheehy: Calbuzz Face-Off: Drill Baby Drill, Yea or No Way? Check it out and let Calbuzz know what you think.

John Garamendi is the Lieutenant Governor of California and a candidate for California’s 10th Congressional District. He is a University of California Regent and California State University trustee and was California’s first elected State Insurance Commissioner, a former Deputy Interior Secretary under President Bill Clinton, a state legislator, and a Peace Corps volunteer. Please visit http://www.garamendi.org for more information.

As our favorite politicos fall all over each other to see who can further erode the healthcare package likely to emerge from Congress, it’s worth recalling that there is another way.

But first, get a glimpse of the latest fiasco moving forward in the Senate Finance Committee, where Max Baucus is leading the charge to develop the all important “bi-partisan” reform bill.

Today’s news is that “everyone’s smiling” — says Kent Conrad, author of the embarrassingly weak proposal for “non-profit coops” as an alternative to the public option, much less the real reform, single payer.

Why? Because they’ve found a way to cut the price tag by $400 billion. How?

largely by reducing the amount of subsidies for low-income individuals to buy insurance

Well, thank goodness. At least that means less public money going into the pockets of the already gorged insurance giants.

Too bad it means more people are likely to go bankrupt or self-ration needed care when Congress passes a bill forcing everyone to buy insurance with no meaningful limits on what the private insurers can charge.

Is there another route? Yes, and it’s not a secret.

The rest of the world has figured it out, as T.R. Reid reminds us in the forthcoming publication of “The Healing of America. A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care.” (Penguin Press) Essentially it’s the print version of the acclaimed Sick Around the World PBS show from last year.

By now, most people have heard how the U.S. ranked just 37th in the World Health Organization’s overall scorecard earlier this decade. Or how the Commonwealth Fund listed the U.S. last year as last among 19 industrial nations in preventable deaths.

But how about this one.

When the WHO assessed 191 countries on the barometer of “fairness,” the U.S. stumbled in at a bare 54th, barely beating out the impoverished African nations of Chad and Rwanda, but still behind Bangladesh and the Maldives. Not exactly a badge of honor.

Can we do better? Of course we can, says Reid, just by learning from the experiences of the rest of the world, especially those other comparable industrial nations which all have some form of national healthcare system — one in which their citizens’ health is not held hostage by profit-making private insurance companies. He concludes:

most rich countries have been national health statistics — longer life expectancy, lower infant mortality, better recovery rates from major diseases” than does the U.S. And they also perform better in presenting patients “a greater choice of doctors, hospitals, and procedures

For those who say we should not taint our borders by emulating France or Germany or Canada, Reid offers this retort:

We have borrowed numerous foreign innovations that have become staples of American daily life: public broadcasting, text messaging, pizza, sushi, yoga, reality TV, The Office, and even American Idol

Apparently we consider our health to be less important.

Reid also provides a useful service in knocking down most of the myths about other national systems that are common grist for the likes of Fox TV and the conservative think tanks.

Such as “they ration care with waiting list and limited choices;” in fact the data varies widely among other countries, and if you want to see really hideous waits, rationing of care, and limited choices, check out most American ERs and insurance network restrictions.

If there’s one crucial difference between the U.S. and all the other countries he surveyed, says Reid, it’s the moral dimension.

Whether a society should guarantee health care, the way we guarantee the right to think and pray as you like, to get an education, to vote in free elections? Or is medicine a commodity to be bought and sold, a product like a car, a computer, or a camera?

Apparently that is what makes our system “uniquely American.” As Reid puts it, “all the developed countries except the United States have decided that every human has a basic right to health care.”

And, that “no other country relies on for-profit insurance companies to pay for basic health care.”

President Obama who in 2003 notably described himself as a single payer advocate, now says it would be too disruptive to the present system to do that now. Well, a lot of people believe our dysfunctional, profit-focused healthcare system needs some good disruption.

And, there’s plenty of examples abroad that you can remake your healthcare system, and make it better, as a number of industrial countries did in the wreckage after World War II.

There’s a more recent example, Taiwan, which in 1994 scrapped its own broken system and adopted a single payer approach similar to Canada.  

Almost overnight, Reid notes, every resident of Taiwan, in their new national single payer system, had complete choice of provider, cut administrative costs to a mere 2 percent, and experienced striking improvements in patient outcomes.

While Taiwan, like some other national systems, has some problems today, mostly with underfunding, it has a much more equitable healthcare infrastructure, and guarantees healthcare coverage for everyone.

With immensely more resources than other nations, there’s no reason we couldn’t learn from their successes, their mistakes, and adopt a national system that would be far more humane than the disaster we have now.

Is the public option that some have deemed the sword we should all fall on in the healthcare debate little more than fool’s gold?

In the wake of the now widely touted New York Times poll this weekend that showed 85 percent of Americans believe our health care system should be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt and that people are even willing to pay more in taxes to get that kind of system,  the next question ought to be why are Democrats and some liberal constituency groups willing to settle for so little?

From the news pages to the blogs, some progressive activists are counting up the votes and what can be done to persuade 12 recalcitrant Senators and a number of insurance industry fans in the House to vote for a “robust” public option.  

But is this really where we should be drawing the line?

One of those not willing to enlist apparently is Robert Kuttner, co-editor of the American Prospect, who wrote Monday

The public option is a not-very-good second best–because our leading liberal politicians lack the nerve to embrace the one reform that simultaneously solves the problem of cost, quality, and universal inclusion. The policy that dare not speak its name is of course comprehensive national health insurance, or Medicare-for-All.

Kuttner also identifies the central problems with the public option that its most passionate advocates have yet to explain how they will avoid:

Basically, it leaves the two worst aspects of the system intact. First, private insurers will continue to dominate. Second, most people will continue to get their insurance through their employers. Given these two bedrock realities, there is no way that the bill can make serious inroads on cost without cutting back on care.

and further:

a mixed system with a public option effectively invites the most expensive and hard-to-treat people to opt for the public plan, while private insurers will seek to insure the young and the healthy. This is a familiar problem known as adverse selection. The private insurers will then smugly point out that the public plan is less “efficient,” when in fact it simply will have a more costly population. The only way to avoid this problem is to have everyone in the same universal plan–what’s otherwise known as a single-payer plan.

Even the “robust” public option, assuming it is not gutted in the heated rush to accommodate the healthcare industry and pass a “bipartisan” bill, will almost certainly be burdened by these shortcomings.

Will the availability of a public plan genuinely stop private insurers from engaging in adverse selection?

Anyone familiar with the marketing techniques the insurers use now will know they have a hundred ways and more to weed out sicker, more costly customers, even with the toughest requirements prohibiting exclusion of patients with pre-existing conditions.

Nothing now proposed in Congress is likely to change these marketing practices.

Will the public option really stop insurance companies from price gouging? The theory we’re told is that the cheaper public plan will force the private companies to lower costs to compete. The reality is likely to be far different.

With the added requirement of an individual mandate, forcing everyone not covered now to buy insurance, many, especially those who are younger, and healthier, will opt for the barebones minimum plans the insurers will be sure to offer as a lure.

But without effective cost controls, the huge out of pocket costs will discourage even the healthiest people from actually using their insurance. And, in the event of an accident or unexpected illness, even greater financial distress looms when they find out all the services their skeletal plans don’t cover or the limitations in the fine print.

Meanwhile, the public plan likely to have a disproportionate number of sicker enrollees and unable to compete in market costs with the multi-billion dollar private corporations could easily face the choice of bankruptcy or, as Kuttner suggests, massive cost cutting in the form of rationing care. To see the future of the public plan, look at what is happening with many public hospitals and clinics today.

Finally, there’s the issue almost no one talks about. Insurance companies denying medical treatment, referrals to specialists, or diagnostic procedures they don’t want to pay for. Will the availability of a public plan prompt the private insurers to start authorizing claims they now deny?

If there’s a message to be drawn from the Times‘ poll, it is that Americans know our system is broken, and they want real change. They want reform that solves the crisis. They want a healthcare system that doesn’t leave them at the mercy of the private insurers, being forced to choose between house payments or going to the doctor. They want to be able to choose their care provider, or keep the one they have. They want coverage they won’t lose if they are unemployed.

And they won’t get that with any of the plans now being touted as politically viable.

One other lesson of the Times‘ poll. If President Obama, who once famously identified himself as an advocate of single payer, and the Democratic leadership were fighting for single payer as hard as they are for limited reform, they would have the overwhelming support of the public.

What’s the alternative for progressives? How about, let’s fight for the reform we need, not just one that might pass, no matter how ineffective the solution it offers.  

The tradition of brave and proud nurse activism for guaranteed healthcare on the single-payer model continued today thanks to Janice Webb, RN, and her nurse intervention at  the convention of the health insurance industry in San Diego, AHIP.  They’re the lobbyists for the insurance giants who make money by denying care to the very patients that Janice cares for at UC-San Diego Medical Center.

As nurses last month shook up the Senate Finance Committee, which led to an important meeting with Senate power broker Max Baucus’ office this week, Nurse Webb took her protest to directly challenge those who are at the main cog in our broken and dysfunctional health care system.  

With thousands of well-paid insurance executives around her waiting to hear from Jeb Bush and Howard Dean, Janice marched up to the stage at the San Diego Convention, where  the moderator was droning on about how hard AHIP is working to find healtcare solutions — meaning legislation that will protect their position at the center of power over our health and the profits they make from the pain and suffering of patients.

Taking the mike, Janice held up a copy of an $11 billion dollar check, Janice then declared, to a mix of cheers and boos, “Nurses have the solution.  You all need to get out of healthcare.  We took up a collection and want to present this check to you to go away so we can finally institute a humane single-payer system for this nation…everybody in, nobody out!”

Of course it did not last long.  Burly security men rushed the stage, grabbed Janice and a companion, and hustled them off.  Hysterical AHIP security guards angrily denounced Janice, and demanded her arrest.  

Instead, the police officers smiled, asked Janice if she had any warrants out, and started to describe the healthcare cutbacks they’re facing due to SDPD’s trouble with affording ever-rising insurance premiums, and escorted her outside  where she was given a raucous welcome from a crowd of nurses, teachers, patients, doctors, and progressive democrats.

Taking the mike again–this time to the cheers of the crowd, Janice said, “They refused my check of course, but they’ll take every bit of money my patients can come up with.  Insurance corporations, nurses and patients want you out of our lives!  How many lives ruined by these corporate executives?  How long will Washington let them deny care, delay care, cancel policies, buy off Washington policies, and masquerade their marketing plans as healthcare reform?  Forcing people to subsidize insurers is NOT healthcare reform.”

Janice was followed by Jeffrey Gordon, a Physicians for a National Health Program member, who brought along a half-dozen of his patients who have been bankrupted or sickened by their insurance companies. You probably saw the report today from PNHP how unpayable medical bills, and income lost as a result of illness, now account for a shocking 62 percent of personal bankruptcies, a number that is rising. Too bad the healthcare reform bills now being framed in the Senate won’t solve that problem — in fact, it will likely make it worse by forcing more people to buy insurance without effective cost controls for ever rising premiums and out of pocket costs.

Gordon told the crowd, “As I was driving here I knew I was in the right place because there’s a whole flock of corporate jets lined up right over there.  We’re here to tell AHIP that it’s time to get rid of their jets.”  He added, “The power of those people across the streets keep the people in Washington from talking about the real problems in healthcare in this nation.  And if you don’t make the right diagnosis there is not cure–which is to get rid of the health insurance industry.”

Jim Gothe, a board member of the California Teachers Association followed Gordon’s point, saying “the bad news is that they’re paying for this conventino with money from students, teachers, retiress.  What sense does that make?  Students are the future of this state!…CTA believes healthcare is a human right for all people.”  The local CTA rep, Kathy Rallings continued his point saying, “My one-year-old son had open heart surgery when he was 3 months old.  You know what that means?  He has a preexisting condition FOREVER.  That means his life will be spent following healthcare…not his dreams.”

It’s not too late.  We will get single-payer in this country because we cannot care for all our patients while also subsidizing AHIP.  Help it along.  Tell Max Baucus that he should still hold a hearing on single-payer, or co-sponsor one with the health committee to provide a real side by side comparison with the plans they are proposing, so the American people can judge for themselves which approach will really produce a reform plan that covers everyone, improves quality of care, and includes genuine cost controls — and gets the hands of AHIP off our necks once and for all.

Single payer activists from coast to coast have done a great job getting the message to Congress, but we have to keep it up. Please Fax Baucus and other committee chairs today.  Healthcare is too important to let Washington get wrong.

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