Guaranteed Healthcare

The idea of a Medicare for All type, single-payer healthcare system will be heard on the Senate floor.  Late last evening, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont filed Senate Amendment No. 2837, and there are two additional original co-sponsors of this amendment, Senator Roland Burris of Illinois and Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio.

Lost in the increasingly dysfunctional healthcare reform debate over phony death books and how much protection money must be paid to the drug and insurance industries to soften their opposition, a major public health tsunami is about to slam the U.S.

It's name is H1N1. OK, not exactly an unreported story, but perhaps under reported. Even with a President's task force report Monday that concluded:

In Canada, it took the dogged determination of one province, Saskatchewan, and a visionary leader Tommy Douglas, to pave the path to a national health care system, which they call Medicare.

For all the detractors of the Canadian system in the studios of Fox News and the board rooms of rightwing think tanks, consider this one note: In 2004, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation conducted a national poll to select the greatest Canadian of all time. The winner in a landslide -- Tommy Douglas. 

Hundreds of people, nurses, doctors, medical students, grassroots activists, and California School Employees Association members gathered in downtown Los Angeles Monday to deliver an unequivocal message about the nature of the healthcare reform Americans so desperately need.

For those inside the tightly scripted White House Forum or anyone watching the live feed on line, that message was blacked out. Inside the pre-selected speakers kept within the accepted framework: we need reform, costs are out of control, Americans are hurting, and preventive care will solve all our problems ('fraid not). Unfortunately nothing proposed in the forum is likely to cure this crisis.

With the final White House Forum on healthcare scheduled Monday, April 6 in downtown Los Angeles, advocates of single payer/guaranteed healthcare have one more opportunity to shake up what has become a dreary conventional wisdom about the presumed acceptable parameters of the debate.

Hundreds of nurses, doctors, healthcare and labor activists will rally at 9 a.m. outside the California Endowment, 1000 North Alameda St., Los Angeles.

It will mark the fifth time, at all five White House regional forums, that the single payer/Medicare for all message will come to the stage, outside and inside the forum.  You can extend that to the town hall meeting at the White House last week where the President was asked why we can't have a national healthcare system like they have in other industrialized nations.

Haven't we heard this song before? It sure looks like the people who already control our healthcare system are framing the biggest issues of the present healthcare reform debate.

From the back rooms to the committee hearings to the White House summits to the front pages of the newspapers, the demands of the insurance industry are given enormous deference and accommodation.

Is it fear of Harry and Louise, the insurance campaign that some believe torpedoed the muddled Clinton health proposal? Is it the considerable influence of insurance industry contributions in the pockets of many legislators?

It's time to lay to rest the myth that spending billions on more high tech is the salvation for rising healthcare costs. Some people will peddle any notion to avoid addressing the best way to rein in costs, pushing the insurance companies out of the way with a single payer system.

It's become an article of faith that a national system of electronic medical records would produce huge savings.  President Obama made it a centerpiece of his healthcare plan during the campaign (as did Sen. John McCain), and has emphasized it repeatedly in legislation and speeches.

As a first step, the stimulus bill allotted $17 billion in incentives to prod doctors and hospitals to get on board during a five year period beginning in 2011, along with financial penalties if they don't.

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.

By Donna Smith 

LAS VEGAS -- It was 6:15 a.m., on day five of the Nevada Nurses Organizing Committee's healthcare road show, and the hotel lobby was filled with energy and with nurses in bright red scrubs.  The final full day of the road show brought huge challenges and huge rewards as the nurses made effective use of various venues for their healthcare reform educating efforts. 

We traveled on the bus from one end of Las Vegas to the other and from the gentle interactions with senior citizens to the snubbing delivered by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV. With two stops before breakfast and three more to go before lunch, the RNs set course for a final healthcare report card road show day chocked full of education, outreach and advocacy. 

The morning's first stop was the Clark County Administration Building where the nurses greeted public employees arriving for work.  The RNs handed out their candidates' healthcare report cards, coffee and several dozen glazed donuts as the occasional county administrator would stop by and make sure the nurses stayed inside a pre-marked box on the sidewalk -- apparently the free speech zone as defined by those perhaps a bit worried about free speech.  We'd move dutifully inside the lines for a few moments and then drift back to our more relaxed mingling with cheerful Clark County workers. 

Undaunted by the warm fall temperatures or even those folks somehow threatened by the free flow of information offered by the nurses' healthcare for all message, the nurses forged onward to the next event with barely a moment to spare to stay on a packed schedule of stops.  Nurses don't scare easily or shy away from difficult situations.  And on this day they seemed particularly determined to close their remarkable statewide tour with energy, passion and solidarity.

By Donna Smith

ELY, Nev – While some of the stops on our RNs’ healthcare road show in Nevada have provided challenges in politically conservative areas from nervous or misinformed people and even local journalists, other stops have brought us in touch with those fellow care providers seeing the toughest of conditions and still trying to deliver quality care.  For the people of the Newe Medical Clinic and Ely Shoshone Health Department, a visit from the nurses’ educational tour bus was a gift of affirmation – a show of support and respect for shared mission.

The bus pulled up in front of the clinic shortly after noon when the warm fall sun made the rural and arid landscape seem even more stark and quiet.  The Nevada Nurses stepped off the bus and into the clinic set up in mobile trailers in a modest neighborhood of Ely, Nevada.  Inside the desks were full of literature and paperwork, while large rooms housed both conference tables for meetings and individual work areas.

The administrator welcomed the RNs and shared with them a bit about her difficulties and frustrations in working to provide services within an Indian Health Service budget that is underfunded.  She acknowledged that true healthcare reformed would relieve many of the pressures on not only the Native patient population but also the local employers who often cannot afford to provide healthcare benefits for employees or who pass along high premium costs to folks making modest wages that must stretch to cover family costs.