A major healthcare union is getting behind national single-payer efforts, while Arnold Schwarzenegger is pushing its exact opposite in California.
All this and more in today’s Guaranteed Healthcare Update, cross-posted at the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association’s Breakroom Blog, as we organize to make 2007 the Year of GUARANTEED healthcare on the single-payer model.
Great news for guaranteed healthcare...the SEIU United Healthcare Workers West, a huge and powerful union, is endorsing Rep. John Conyers’ HR 676, the bill implementing a single-payer system in the U.S. A powerful coalition is building behind this concept, now including hundreds of unions.
Unfortunately, Mitt Romney’s healthcare plan—-the exact opposite of HR 676--may be coming to California through the efforts of Arnold Schwarzenegger. (reg. req’d) The California Nurses Association opposes this attempt to bandaid our healthcare crisis by shuttling more people into the arms of private health insurance corporations. Among other reasons, it would be financially devastating for working- and middle-class people, and would give insurers even more control over medical decision-making, while jacking up their profits.
Julie Pierce, profiled in SiCKO as a victim of these very insurance companies, after she lost her husband because his cancer treatment was denied, is emerging as an American hero and a tireless advocate for guaranteed healthcare.
On a related note, Los Angeles will not file charges against police who left a woman to die on a floor at a troubled hospital there.
Meanwhile, Maine is finding it difficult to reform healthcare and preserve profits for the insurance industry.
Finally, the fact that not even kids can get guaranteed healthcare in this country, is emblematic of the need for some politicians to start paying an electoral price for not taking this crisis seriously.
To join the fight for guaranteed healthcare (with a "Medicare for All" or SinglePayer financing), visit with GuaranteedHealthcare.org, a project of the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association.