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Bill Moyers Journal Focuses on Health Care and Nurses’ Role in Reform |
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Intensive care nurse Geri Jenkins says that a 67-year-old male patient with a history of four heart attacks, a quadruple bypass and an implanted defibrillator and about to take a high stress job “would be uninsurable for having a pre-existing condition.”
Unless, of course, he was Dick Cheney and about to become the vice president of the United States in 2001. Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association/ National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), says Cheney
can have the choice of doctors. He can go to any hospital. He can have excellent standard of care. And he’s alive today because of it. And there are a lot of people who aren’t….We, as the public, pay for Dick Cheney’s care. Why not—why is the government not providing the same type of care to all Americans?
DeMoro and Jenkins, a member of the CNA/NNOC Council of Presidents, were featured in the May 9 edition of “Bill Moyers Journal‘ on PBS that examined the nation’s broken health care system and the role the nurses’ union is playing in the drive for health care reform.
The Cheney example of the huge inequities in who receives health care, and who doesn’t, is the centerpiece of the union’s recent ad campaign calling for guaranteed health care for all.
Reporter Rick Karr told viewers:
Some very determined people are taking up the fight for universal health care. They’re nurses—who day in and day out—encounter the human consequences of a broken system.
DeMoro told Karr:
Every registered nurse in this country advocates for her patient at the bedside. She’s there. She’s the last line of defense for the patients. She fights for the patients against hospital corporations, often putting her own job in jeopardy. And you can’t fight for your patient without changing the social structure in which that care is delivered. So, registered nurses, organized by us, have become a pretty dramatic force in this country to change the healthcare system.
If you look at health care in America, there is no health care system. There’s a health care industry. The major objective is profit-making. Which means not providing the patient all of the care that they need, discharging patients early, patients without insurance being treated differently than wealthy people, frankly. And that is the healthcare system in America. Those who can afford it get to live and those who can’t suffer needlessly.
Click here to view the show or read the full transcript.
4 Comments
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Kudos to NNOC/CNA for their efforts in pushing for single payer health care. As long as profit is the bottom line for these corporate monsters, the insured will get the minimal care!
The AFL-CIO should be on the front line along with NNOC and pushing for CheneyCare!
38,000 Health Insurance Executives will be in San Francisco. In solidarity with protests on June 19th and in celebration of Juneteenth, the anniversary of the emancipation from slavery and now our fight for emancipation from the insurance companies, health care activists around the country are organizing demonstrations at insurance companies with patients, nurses, doctors, social workers, and Americans of every stripe protesting the National Health Insurance industry to say:
Health Care YES! Health Insurance NO! Guaranteed, Single Payer Health Care NOW!
TAKE ACTION JUNE 19th!
Labor needs to be out there in force!!
In San Antonio we are planning to picket the headquarters of Humana on Fredricksburg Road. We invite all who are interested in real single payer to join us! NNOC will be with us as well!
As a cancer survivor, I can tell you that nurses are the best ally a patient can have. There is no substitute for an experienced, caring, extremely knowledgeable nurse when you are fighting for your life. Sure, my oncologist was a great doctor—but the radiology,hematology,chemotherapy, and acute care nurses delivered the care as he directed. They were the frontline caregivers who saved my life along the way; they were the ones whose skilled observation detected changes in my condition and alerted my doctor. They saved my life; I am eternally grateful for them.
My message is that anyone in this great nation who has a catastrophic illness or injury should be able to get the care they need just because they need it—not because they were lucky enough to land a good job with benefits, like me. They should be able to get health screenings, immunizations, and everyday health care needs without having to make hard choices. No one should have to decide whether to buy groceries or pay for their medications—but every day, in America, people have to do just that.
The cost of health care is a boogey man that comes to every union bargaining session. It cuts wages, causes concessions, steals from retirees, and threatens every employee who ever had a serious health problem—and their families as well. We need single payer health care.
Working America and the unions need to B.I.T.C.H !! (Be Involved To Change Health Care.) We ended up in this health care mess over the years as the health insurance companies, the drug companies and the malpractice lawyers got their slimy little paws into health care. My vote is for HR 676, it’s not perfect, but it kicks the bloodsuckers out of the health care equation and starts healing our terminally ill health care system….