SEARCH
Hundreds of Nurses Rally on Capitol Hill in National Day of Action |
|
 |
| 500 nurses rallied for health care reform Wednesday on Capitol Hill. |
Here’s a great report on nurses rallying for health care reform in Washington, D.C., from Katrina Blomdahl, writer-researcher for RNs Working Together, a coalition of 10 AFL-CIO unions representing more than 200,000 registered nurses nationally.
Spirits and energy ran high today as hundreds of nurses from all over the country gathered to participate in a National RN Day of Action in Washington, D.C., adding their voices to the nationwide demands for comprehensive health care reform.
The day’s activities included an animated morning nurses’ conference, followed by a march to Upper Senate Park that gained power along the way, gathering 500 nurses and another 500 patient advocates.
Speakers at the rally included Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC); Ann Converso, RN, president of the United American Nurses (UAN); Gregory Junemann, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE); Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.); Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.); and M*A*S*H actor Mike Farrell.
After the rally, a large contingent of nurses advanced on Capitol Hill to lobby for a single-payer health care plan and a strong legislative agenda that includes two health care bills introduced today—the National Nursing Shortage Reform and Patient Advocacy Act, sponsored by Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), and the Nurse and Healthcare Worker Protection Act of 2009, sponsored by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.).
The energy in the room shot through the roof when AFL-CIO President John Sweeney pointed to the need for a system that provides health care for all:
President Obama and the Congress want to concentrate on turning around our economy, and we’re all for that. But our elected officials must realize that we will never have an economy that works for everyone until we have health care that is always there for everyone.
Jean Ross, RN, UAN secretary-treasurer, emphasized that nurses are ready and willing to step up the political pressure to get a system that works for everyone.
Politicians say, “I can’t work wonders, you have to make me.” Well, we’re here, and we’re strong, and we’re ready to make you.
While flexing their political muscle on Capitol Hill, nurses also are strategizing to strengthen their outreach. Ross says:
We’ve done a lot of talking today about organizing, as we always do. We care deeply about organizing because the only way we’re going to challenge those big hospital chains is by joining our power together.
With the economy the way it is right now, it is not the time to silence nurses. We have lots of laid-off workers in this country. Many of them should become nurses. We’re trying to keep the profession attractive, so that they want to become nurses.
Martha Kuhl, treasurer of CNA/NNOC, pointed to the size of the gathering as a major sign of optimism:
It’s incredibly exciting! Looking around the room, you can see that every nurse is excited to be lobbying for patients and for ourselves. As a nurse, you don’t want to see a child come in sicker than they should because their family didn’t have health care. We don’t want patients to not get the care they need because insurance companies deny care or because they can’t afford it.
CNA/NNOC board member DeAnn McEwan, RN, says she’s ready for structural change in the way we handle health care.
We’re defenseless against the for-profit health care industry. Insurers provide no value in the delivery of health care services. They are not licensed or competent, yet they are able to overrule expert practitioners at the bedside. We want to make sure everyone has the care they need without respect to their ability to pay.
Wearing buttons reading: “RNs: the REAL Healthcare Policy Experts” and “Well Behaved Women Seldom Make History,” McEwan is a committed activist who sees herself as participating in a strong history of social/political activism among nurses.
Yesterday was the 189th anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birthday, and yesterday DeAnn McEwan was arrested at the Senate Finance Committee Meeting along with four other health care activists.
Some 40 other RNs staged a silent protest—standing before the committee in red nursing scrubs and turning their backs to show signs reading “Nurses Say: Patients First. Stop AHIP. Pass Single-Payer.” (AHIP, America’s Health Insurance Plans, is the private insurance industry lobby arm.)
McEwan was reading a quote from Nightingale when police escorted her out of the room. She wanted them to hear Nightingale’s call to action:
Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better.
McEwan says she didn’t plan to be arrested, she just wanted to get the message out.
As patient advocates, we are disappointed with what we have. We can do better. We should do better.
McEwan was charged with “disorderly conduct” and “disruption of Congress.” She finds the second charge ironic.
They accused me of disrupting Congress, but I think that Congress is disrupting our health care system, and that compelled me speak out.
The RN Day of Action was sponsored by CNA/NNOC, UAN, Massachusetts Nurses Association, Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, New York State Nurses Association and the SEIU Nurse Alliance.
10 Comments
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Bush, while in power, relented on attacking Social Security as he realized that to do so would probably would probably be “the last straw”. Even Bush realized attacking Social Security would induce a massive and possibly violent reaction from the tens of millions of people dependent on Social Security for survival.
Now comes along the Obama “administration”. The Obama regime is little more than Bush with a “happy face” to impose what Bush could not. The Obama regime is bringing “change” with a vengence even while the tears of joy still blind millions caught up in Obama-mania. More war, more impoverishment of working people, and now getting ready to undermine Social Security at last.
Read this story, Obama-maniacs, and prepare to shed more tears…tears of pain.
US: Cuts in Social Security, Medicare to pay for bank bailouts
By Tom Eley
14 May 2009
Follow this link to read the full story:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/may2009/ssmd-m14.shtml
A government report made public Tuesday indicates that Social Security and Medicare will deplete their trust funds more quickly than previously forecast. This has sparked new demands from within the US financial elite for substantial cuts in the two entitlement programs, which pay retirement and medical benefits for tens of millions of working class Americans.
The report was issued by the programs’ trustees, a group of four Obama administration officials headed by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Because regressive payroll taxes on workers’ earnings fund the two programs, mounting unemployment has worsened the projections. Since December 2007, 5.7 million jobs have been lost, and the official unemployment rate now approaches 9 percent.
The slump has slowed the rate of inflation to below the level required by law to trigger a cost-of-living raise for Social Security recipients. As a result, the trustees project that in 2010 and 2011, for the first time since automatic cost-of-living raises were incorporated into Social Security in the 1970s, there will be no increase in retirement benefits, and only a minuscule 1.4 percent rise in 2012.”
….
There is no resolution outside of a struggle against this financial aristocracy. The medical industry must be wrested from the hands of the insurers, pharmaceuticals and for-profit hospital chains and placed under the democratic control of its doctors, nurses and health care workers, who will determine how medicine’s enormous potential can be best deployed to meet human needs, ensuring long and healthy retirements.”
Why would you attack Presidents Bush and Obama for this? President Bush tried to reform social security and immigration and was stymied - but he tried. President Obama has the courage to try to address major issues - and he is already being attacked by people like you who simply do not want to deal with the fact that there is a financial shortfall and our nation has to deal with it.
When you learn about personal financial challenges in your family do you shoot the messenger or the person who suggests cutting back - or do you simply spend more? Or do you demand others support you?
These problems will not be solved if you simply ignore them or vilify anyone who tries to forsee and address them. The failure to act by both political parties and the criticism of everyone who tries to act is the reason we are in such deep financial trouble as a nation!
Thank you for publicizing this demonstratin.
Did not know that DeAnn McEwan had been arrested. Guess I have to call one of my senators who I believe is on that Finance Committee and let him know that I am angry. Have emailed DeAnn on several nursing issues. Am also a single payer supporter.
Universal Health Care
A poem by David G. Hurlburt 2007
Health care is our basic human right.
Now is the time to stand up and fight.
Put our money and our vote up on the line.
Get up on our feet and walk a picket line.
Dial a phone or write a letter,
Do it so every one will feel better.
Why should only the rich have medical care?
And the poor kids die but Bush doesn’t care?
Get out of your chair and in to the street.
It is time for us all to vote with our feet.
Show and tell politicians, turn up the heat.
If we all fight together we can not be beat.
The Iraqis get universal health care,
The rules of war require that its there.
Prisoners in Git-mo get medical care.
But not all Americans that’s just not fair?
What about the hard working poor?
They need medical care for sure?
The system is broken it profits the greedy.
Let us fix the system to serve the needy.
While we are at it Health care for profit must go.
Single payer health care for all is the way to go.
Overhead and profit is just another poison pill.
We have had enough we have taken our fill.
Skyrocketing premiums, deductibles and co-pay,
Caused by advertising, profit and big CEO pay.
It must be stopped now and here is the fix.
There is a bill in the congress HR six seven six.
We need Single Payer Health care. America spends more than any other country and insure less of it’s people than any other country.
My latest political cartoon is about Single Payer advocates not getting heard and arrested, and made fun of by Max Baucus at the current Senate Hearings on Health Care.
it’s up on my website now
http://www.whatnowtoons.com
left of center political cartoons
Doctors and nurses arrested at a meeting of the Senate Finance Committee on the orders of Der Führer Baucus. (“Achtung! Free speech? Not in my Committee!!!!”)
Nurses rallying on Capitol Hill.
Where are the rest of the people?
On May 30 there will be rallies and marches to demand single-payer health care justice all across America.
Will you be there? Will you take this first baby-step in the struggle to achieve true health care reform?
The crowds on May 30 must be massive. Let’s not sit on the sidelines while committed doctors and nurses fight our fight! We’re in this together.
See you on May 30! No excuses!
We demand HR 676, the United States National Health Insurance Act…and nothing less!
Maybe Sweeney will lead the March in Washington..then again not!
Our democratic led Congress has turned into the gestapo, Baucus has now closed ALL future hearings to the public. The insurance industry has lied to Obama, about cost cutting (they said he “substantially overstated” their promise of cost cutting), and yet they will continue to sit and BS and write legislation that will benefit them. And those who want to speak about single payer are now shut out. What kind of garbage is this? Labor works their a–es off during the campaign season, block walking, phone banking, getting people out to vote, and now our “allies” in Washington are turning their backs to us? Well when it starts with Sweeney, isn’t it a wonder why labor keeps getting kicked in the ass?
America does indeed need single payer healthcare, but that is not what they are going to get.
Both Obama and the senate has “stacked” the deck of healthcare reforms favoring Insurance companies, drug companies and HMOs in the dealing. What I have seen of their proposals, single payer is dead in those institutions and they never included single payer options in discussion in the first place.
Social Security? Although the economy did hurt “tax collections”, the outsourcing of jobs hurt it more. Simple to fix: quit outsourcing every job in sight.
Enacting a bill (like HR676) would make our businesses more competative, but Wall street does not like to compete; it likes welfare–corporate welfare.
The labor movement should flood D.C. with tens of thousands of members demanding REAL healthcare reform; SINGLE PAYER!
I applaud the 13 that went to jail to get their points across! This is what struggle is about! This is how EFCA and real healthcare reform will come about!