Infomercial king Billy Mays, known for screaming about the wonders of cleaning solutions Kaboom!, OxiClean, and other household products, is now starring in a commercial for what he calls "the most important product I've ever endorsed:" health insurance.
In today’s roundup from the movement for guaranteed healthcare, Progressive Democrats of America lead the charge to put real healthcare reform in the Democratic platform, a Hawaii activist reports on single-payer organizing at Obama platform meetings, a Massachusetts RN warns that the healthcare mess in their state was created when "moderates" cut a deal to protect insurance profits, and Senatorial candidate Jeff Merkley endorses HR 676...though he also endorses the terrible Wyden bill, from his future fellow Oregon Senator.
Oh and health insurers keep laughing to the bank, with Aetna reporting another few hundred million in profit.
It’s all below! Brought to you by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee and the Guaranteed Healthcare Blog.
This is one of those updates on the movement for guaranteed healthcare that is difficult to write, both in terms of the gravity of the situation, and the need for Washington to act accordingly.
The numbers are staggering, and barely made it into the US media: 101,000 Americans died preventable deaths last year due to our insurance industry-dominated health care system, according to a new study by the respected Commonwealth Fund.
That is shocking, lobbyist-induced genocide.
The good news is that, despite the best efforts of the insurance industry and their Washington allies, the movement towards guaranteeing healthcare on a Medicare for All or "single-payer" model is clearly strengthening. The latest advocates? Doctors, who just this decade have joined nurse, in solidly supporting Universal Medicare, a fact which will fundamentally alter healthcare politics.
Maybe I’m too optimistic, but stepping back from the details of the healthcare reform movement, and looking at the big national trends, there is reason to hope that the movement in California for guaranteed healthcare will lead the nation along a path to progress.
Obviously in many ways the situation is different...labor unions are stronger in California than they are nationally, (and led the way in defeating the insurance industry-backed fake healthcare reform bill offered last year by Arnold Schwarzenneger and former Speaker Fabian Nunez), and the healthcare grassroots might be more developed as well.
But the underlying economics are the same...workers, families, employers and the state budget alike are all being crushed by out-of-control costs for insurance premiums, deductibles, and co-pays, all for a service that places us last in the industrialized world, and to subsidize a health insurance industry that plays no role in the delivery of patient care.
So let’s just take a look at the evidence that suggests California is leading the nation:
This year’s extended primary just might be great for healthcare reform as the Clinton campaign's failure may have killed off the terrible idea of insurance mandates. She ran on it, and lost—-just like Arnold did in California last year.
If so, great news all around. Working people, already struggling, will not face the prospects of having their wages garnished to pay off Blue Cross’ inflated premiums, overhead, and denials. Healthcare reformers can focus their work towards enacting genuine solutions, rather than fighting off this insurance marketing scheme masquerading as health care policy. And all of us can debate the real issues at hand here, like the new report finding the number of underinsured is spiking as our healthcare system continues its death-by-insurer spiral.
We’ll take a look at this and updates from single-payer movement below!
In an extraordinary convention just concluding in Puerto Rico, here's what you didn't hear from Andy Stern's paid PR blitz. SEIU was under siege throughout by protest encampments of the popular Puerto Rican Teachers’ Union, responding to SEIU’s raid of the island’s largest union-- during a strike to improve horrific educational conditions.
Inside the convention, to the detriment of the overall labor movement, Stern successfully squashed the internal dissent by SEIU’s democracy activists, thereby further concentrating power in himself. The CEO model.
And in an extraordinary development, Stern announced that SEIU is basically doing away with labor reps in favor of outsourced call centers...which makes sense, in that if you sign no-strike promises to your employer, why would you need to mobilize your members?
There’s more! SEIU is continuing its war against state and national RN unions by now picking up John McCain’s frame of attacking "government-run healthcare" as their latest salvo against the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (AFL-CIO). That's called selling out healthcare reform.
Look, I'm not sure what to make of this poll either. I'm still rubbing the sleep, and the delight, out of my eyes--and remembering my once-annulled marriage, and wondering if I'm about to becoe the Gay Divorce, thanks to conservative Christians who have hijacked churches, our dialogue, and too much of our government.
In a dramatic reversal of decades of public opinion, California voters agree by a slim majority that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry, according to a Field Poll released today.
By 51-42 percent, registered voters said they believed same-sex marriage should be legal in California. Only 28 percent favored gay marriage in 1977, when the Field Poll first asked that question, said Mark DiCamillo, the poll's director.
"This is a milestone in California," he said. "You can't downplay the importance of a change in an issue we've been tracking for 30 years."
The insurance industry is showing its true colors today, with a couple of odious bills premised on the assumption that subsidizing insurance corporations is the way to guarantee healthcare. As we move towardsJune 19th-the National Day of Protest Against Insurance Corporations—this anti-patient legislation reminds us why we fight the big insurers and word for guaranteed healthcare on the single-payer model.
Let’s take a look.
Brought to you by the California Nurses Association, National Nurses Organizing Committee, and Leadership Conference on Guaranteed Healthcare.
RNs now celebrate Mary Seacole Day as part of National Nurses Week—and as the day we honor the social justice aspect of the work of nurses. Mary Seacole remains an important inspiration for the national nurses movement being built by CNA/NNOC (California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee), which focuses on improving patient care and safety in hospitals and on bringing this country the guaranteed, single-payer health care that our patients deserve.
The union will provide resources exclusively to the GOP this fall, the person said. Union leaders, joined by key health care industry figures, met Friday with Sen. Bruno to discuss how to help the GOP hold control.
The Reps hold the Senate in this blue state by a 32-30 margin, which is very bad news for a wide range of progressive causes, especially healthcare. This SEIU-Republican deal is instructive for those following the debate within the labor movement between Andy Stern’s SEIU and the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, much of which turns on the political profiles of the unions and on CNA/NNOC's work towards guaranteed healthcare.
A major reason for the increasing controversy surrounding SEIU International has been their lack of commitment to genuine healthcare reform—and in fact their active attempts to undermine and sink patient-centered, single-payer reforms.
Progressive elements in the labor movement (and their own union) have long been aware of this problem, as have healthcare and single-payer activists around the country.
This story is now entering the wider public discussion as SEIU International embarks on new partnerships with corporate America and, all too often, Republican power brokers. We’ll take a look, below, at their latest partnership, this one with the National Federation of Independent Business and the National Association of Realtors, to support a bill that hurts patients in the name of increasing insurance corporation profits—and, perhaps, winning employer sanction for SEIU organizing.
...for more background, please visit the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee’s new site, ServingEmployersInsteadofUs.
4,000 brave women and men, RNs from the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, are spending this week on the picket lines outside of Sutter Health Hospitals throughout Northern California, on a 10-day strike over patient care issues. Let me tell you about it, and introduce you to some of the RNs, because this is an important strike for a re-energized American labor movement and a key moment for the nation’s battle for quality healthcare.
The healthcare crisis is not just bankrupting our economy—it is relentlessly impoverishing Americans. Recent data highlights cuts in wages, gaps in life expectancy, and a healthcare industry that looks more like Bear Stearns everyday. None of this will be solved until we make politicians get serious about health care reform.
This week in Ohio there was a major victory for democratic, member-led, social justice unionism. A hospital chain hand-picked a union, SEIU, which is known for being friendly to employers, and attempted to impose this company union on employees without a democratic process or any show of support among workers.
Local nurses, together with the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association, started an effort to block this anti-democratic, top-down deal and were successful--in a major victory for RNs, patients, and healthcare reform.
She’s in full-on patient revolt mode, working with fellow nurses to get the back surgery she needs to avoid a lifetime of disability. We’ll take a look at what’s happening and why. It’s an important template that someday might help your friends or family—and ask you to lend a hand, or at least a couple of dialing fingers.
In 1995, Taiwan had 40% of its population without health coverage, a huge rich-poor gap in life expectancy, and a ton of social and economic problems as a result.
So they did the rational thing: they introduced a national, non-profit, single-payer health care system.
Is this any way to run a healthcare system? Today we learn that patients across the country are entering the "DNA underground," purposely avoiding or hiding DNA tests because they know their insurer will kick them off the rolls, or jack their rates up, in they don't. These very same insurers, we also learn today, have taken to combing facebook profiles in a bid to kick sick people off their rolls.
In a single-payer system, everyone is in and nobody’s out. In today’s healthcare system, the healthy are in, and the rest of us are out. How is that a good thing?
