National Nurses United

RAD_March REV 4/1/10 3:23 PM Page 18 Erosion of women's reproductive rights through provisions that will likely mean few insurers will cover abortion and perhaps other reproductive care. A windfall for pharmaceutical giants. As a result of a deal with the pharmaceutical industry, the White House blocked provisions to give the government more power to negotiate drug prices and gave the namebrand drugmakers 12 years of marketing monopoly against generic competition on biologic drugs, including cancer treatments. Most critically, the bill strengthens the economic and political power of a private insurance system based on profit rather than patient need. As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote after the vote, "Don't believe anyone who says Obama's healthcare legislation marks a swing of the pendulum back toward the Great Society and the New Deal. Obama's health bill is a very conservative piece of legislation, building on a Republican [a private market approach] rather than a New Deal foundation. The New Deal foundation would have offered Medicare to all Americans or, at the very least, featured a public insurance option." Unlike Social Security and Medicare, which expanded a public safety net, this bill requires people—in the midst of mass unemployment and the worse economic downturn since the Great Depression—to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket to big private companies for a product that may or may not provide health coverage in return. Too many people will remain uninsured, individual and family healthcare costs will continue to rise largely unabated, and private insurers will still be able to deny claims with little recourse for patients. If, as the President and his supporters insist, the bill is just a start, let's hold them to that promise. Let's see the same resolve and mobilization from legislators and constituency groups who pushed through this bill to go farther, and achieve a permanent solution to our healthcare crisis with universal, guaranteed healthcare by expanding and improving Medicare to cover everyone. Leaders of National Nurses United have raised many of these concerns about the legislation for months. But, sadly, as the healthcare bill moved closer to final passage, the space for genuine debate and critique of the bill's very real limitations was largely squeezed out. Much of the fault lies with the far right, from the streets to the airwaves to some legislators that steadily escalated from deliberate misrepresentations to fear mongering to racial epithets to hints of threatened violence against bill supporters that continued after the law was enacted. For its part, the administration and its major supporters shut out advocates of more far-reaching reform, while vilifying critics on the left. Both trends are troubling for democracy, as is the pervasive corporate lobbying that so clearly influenced the language of the bill. Insurers, drug companies, and other corporate lobbyists shattered all records for federal influence peddling and were rewarded with a bill that largely protected their interests, along with a Supreme Court ruling that will allow corporations, including the health care industry, to spend unlimited sums in federal elections. Rightwing opponents fought as hard to block this legislation as they would have against a Medicare-for-all plan. As more Americans recognize the bill does not resemble the distortions peddled by the right, and become disappointed by their rising medical bills and ongoing fights with insurers for needed care, there will be a new opportunity to press the case for real reform. Next time, let's get it done right. Rose Ann DeMoro is executive director of National Nurses United. California Bill Would Protect Nurses Injured on the Job The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee is mobilizing RNs to support legislation that would make it easier for nurses injured on the job to receive workers' compensation benefits. Registered nurses and other hospital workers are suffering increasing numbers of head and back injuries and exposures to infectious diseases due to the physical nature of patient care, California's aging nursing workforce, and rising patient acuity and obesity. Sponsored by Assemblymember Nancy Skinner, A.B. 1994 would establish that when a hospital employee contracts a blood-borne infectious disease, neck or back impairment, MRSA infection, or H1N1 influenza, it is presumed to have been contracted through employment with the hospital. This would dramatically cut down on the bureaucracy RNs must navigate in order to receive benefits. 18 N AT I O N A L N U R S E "Police and firefighters now have the benefit of presumptions under workers' compensation law for a number of jobrelated injuries," said Assemblymember Skinner. "Isn't it curious that female-dominated professions such as nursing do not have the same protections? I've introduced A.B. 1994 to create equity." As National Nurse went to press, the bill was scheduled to be heard in early April by the Assembly Insurance Committee. CNA/NNOC is also working to amend S.B. 1111, which would change the disciplinary process followed by the state's healing arts boards, including the Board of Registered Nursing. S.B. 1111 was proposed in the wake of media reports about delays in disciplining nurses with a history of drug use and other infractions. CNA/NNOC believes reform is needed, but the bill also contains provisions that could harm nurses and patients, said W W W. N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G CNA/NNOC Government Relations Director Bonnie Castillo, RN. Among other things, the legislation would require nurses' addresses to be posted on the internet and eliminate the Board's substance abuse diversion program, which helps nurses with addictions receive treatment. Additionally, the bill would give the director of the Department of Consumer Affairs, an unelected political appointee who is not a health professional, the power to suspend an RN's license, weakening nurses' due process rights. CNA/NNOC is opposing two bills in the legislature that would permit dangerous infringements on nursing practice. S.B. 1051 would allow classified employees in the state's school system to administer Diastat, a form of Valium that must be applied rectally in the midst of a seizure, to epileptic children. A.B. 1802 would allow unlicensed personnel to inject diabetic students with insulin. —Staff Report MARCH 2010

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