Guaranteed Healthcare

By Donna Smith

WASHINGTON, DC -- Some scenes defy verbal description.  Above see our RNs at the Vietnam War Memorial sculpture depicting nurses on the battlefield.  Those of you lucky enough to know our president, Geri Jenkins, trauma RN, know she was teaching all the while... as her fellow members looked on and even a tour group became better informed about a nurse's role and duty, no matter what the emotion of the moment or the setting. 

Below we see a third grade student from Orange County, Calif., after her mom and grandmom had shared with her why all these names are etched in stone.  The family paid tribute to a fallen friend, but the girl's mother also took a moment to acknowledge the nurses of CNA who also rank among the family's heroes.  "Thank you for how hard you fight," she said as our nurses walked past.

And what could we say on the steps of the Capital Building?  That we want HR676, publicly funded, privately delivered healthcare for all?  Well, yes, that would be what this proud and stoic nurses' union has fought for and struggled for and committed to as the way to fulfill its goals and mission.  Single payer healthcare -- as advocated by the nurses -- is by far the most responsible, respectful and reasonable plan for our nation.  And the nurses will keep bringing it on in their home states and nationally until every patient, every citizen, every human being is granted the basic human right of healthcare when he or she is ill.

Then we saw actors' troupes and children's groups and senior citizens, all devoted to an ideal -- that this nation is one of diverse people with common aspirations and common human rights.  And until those rights -- including the right to healthcare -- are granted, the nurses will march onward.  From a bus parked in front of Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nearly two weeks ago to the steps of the seat of power in this democracy, the nurses drafted another chapter in the history of this land and its recognition of healthcare as a basic human right.

With the historic election on Tuesday, may this nation enter a new phase of listening to its heroes -- the nurses -- who stand beside every patient, on foreign or domestic battlefields, to advocate and to educate and to heal. Because if we think for one moment that the healthcare crisis is not a battle, then we will have dishonored the struggle of 80,000 nurse-warriors who know otherwise. 

"Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane." - Martin Luther King, Jr.