Guaranteed Healthcare

By Donna Smith

CHESAPEAKE, Virginia --  Perhaps it would have been more logical to wrap up this road show in the nation's capital, grab the "money" shots and head for home.  But that wouldn't be quite the usual style of the brave and hard-working nurses of the National Nurses Organizing Committee or the California Nurses Association.  So long as there were voters to educate and healthcare "hero" candidates who needed support, the nurses worked on.

In Chesapeake, Virginia, Congressional candidate Andrea Miller of Congressional District 4 has been working hard and talking to her future constituents for several months, and she sure was thrilled to see the healthcare road show bus, complete with the RNs' candidate report card, in her district.  CNA/NNOC president Geri Jenkins shared some rally time with Andrea and wished her well in tomorrow's election.

While the presidential race is often the sexiest from a media perspective, nurses know that when they look for legislative support for making their profession stronger, it is often the people who hold Congressional office that are the most critical.  So on this long road show, the bus made its way to five of the Congressional districts where RNs identified healthcare heroes -- candidates who support single payer, publicly funded and privately delivered healthcare.

So, the road show wrapped up its 10-state run in Virginia.  It seemed like everywhere we went there were volunteers working on Get-Out-the-Vote efforts and infusing energy into the election process.  As we bid farewell to the road, the nurses were set to head home to their home states -- but not to put their feet up and rest.  The nurses were heading home to knock on doors, serve as poll watchers, give rides to polling places, make phone calls and continue the work so vital to this democracy.

Tomorrow, the work begins anew.  There is no rest so long as Americans are dying due to the lack of accessible healthcare.  Those deaths do not stop on election day or simply because one party or the other scores a win.  Yesterday, today and tomorrow, more than 60 American families will bury a loved one because our healthcare system is so very broken.  And unless our new leaders -- both our President and our new Congress -- launch into real healthcare reform efforts with all appropriate haste, the death toll will keep mounting.  Changing that reality would be the nurses' true victory.