National Nurses United

RAD:1 6/7/07 2:50 PM Page 9 Rose Ann DeMoro Executive Director, CNA/NNOC Sharp Focus With the new film SiCKO, nurses have a golden moment to train the lens on what's really wrong with healthcare. with the help of a popular movie, nurses really can transform the healthcare debate. Just a few days before Michael Moore's SiCKO debuted to rave reviews at the Cannes Film Festival in late May, I was invited on behalf of CNA/NNOC to attend a small, final private screening of the film in New York. In the audience besides us were only those who made the film, and the stars. These are not your traditional stars. Their names are not embossed on Hollywood Boulevard, and they don't hang out on Muscle Beach or in a tent behind the California Capitol smoking cigars like Arnold Schwarzenegger. In fact, they have a lot in common with nurses.Likenurseswhospendfartoomanyhoursbattling the bean counters and bureaucrats to get patientsthecaretheyneed,thestarsofSiCKOhave alsohadintimateexperiencewithournation'simploding healthcare system. And it's unlikely any of them will be making commercial plugs for the insurance industry any time soon. Moore introduces us to a few of the people who can't get or can't afford insurance, including two young people rejected because they were too fat or too thin and a woman who once had a yeast infection. But the film is not about the uninsured, Moore quickly notes. It's about the 250 million Americans who have health insurance. It's about the woman in SiCKO denied payment for an ambulance ride after a car crash because it wasn't "pre-approved" and another woman whose husband was denied a bone marrow transplant from his younger brother because it was "experimental." Neither woman, nor a half dozen other patients now "covered" who are profiled in SiCKO would benefit one bit from the "reforms" proposed by Schwarzenegger or most of the other half-baked ideas before Congress or other state legislatures. Proposals by virtually all the presidential candidates fall in that camp as well. M AY 2 0 0 7 Despite some disparate elements, what unites those proposals is that they all expand the role of the same callous insurance industry that is largely the source of our healthcare crisis. An industry that has created an army of claims adjustors and insurance agents whose main focus is to increase company revenues by denying care. Universal insurance is not universal care, as SiCKO's stars tragically discover, and as nurses see every hour of every day. No wonder that in comments after the screening we attended, Moore talked about the frustration and demoralization of so many nurses and doctors today. And, we'd emphasize, a commitment to achieve fundamental change. In the coming months, nurses throughout California and the nation will be working or some state versions, like Sen. Sheila Kuehl's SB 840 in California. These would guarantee healthcare for all, assure comprehensive uniform benefits, control costs, and end insurance industry interference with care. The government collects the money now spent on care and provides it to our current system of mostly private providers. If you think that sounds scary, when was the last time you talked to your insurance company on the phone? "Nobody would ever say the city water department should be turning a profit. Without water you don't live," says Moore. "Healthcare should be the same way." If we are ever going to build a genuinely humane society, we need to discard the notions of consumerism when it comes to the most basic No matter how many incremental reforms are piled on top of the existing system, the insurers are not going to change their intrinsic behavior, any more than you can expect an alligator to stop eating meat by giving it time outs. It's time for the politicians to stop trying to help the insurers and adopt a plan that helps the rest of us instead. with Moore to expand the broad grassroots campaign already under way in communities from coast to coast to achieve the one reform that goes to the heart of the problem. As Moore puts it plainly, "we need to eliminate private health insurance companies—that's the biggest single impediment to making sure everybody who needs to be taken care of receives the help they require." No matter how many incremental reforms are piled on top of the existing system, the insurers are not going to change their intrinsic behavior, any more than you can expect an alligator to stop eating meat by giving it time outs. It's time for the politicians to stop trying to help the insurers and adopt a plan that helps the rest of us instead. There is a humane, rational alternative. For example, bills such as HR 676 in Congress W W W. C A L N U R S E S . O R G factor of our humanity—our health. We already have that expectation when it comes to our personal safety, with publicly guaranteed police and fire services. But somehow our health, our life, has become a commodity. At a time when the apologists of accommodation are promoting the lowest common denominator, Moore most of all offers a vision and hope. "Not all of us have a kid in Iraq, but all of us have been to see a doctor, or paid for a prescription, or have elderly parents," he said after the screening. Nurses might put it another way, there's no free marketers in hospital beds, just patients. I Rose Ann DeMoro is executive director of CNA/NNOC. REGISTERED NURSE 9

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