National Nurses United

NewsBriefs. Sept 2006 9/1/06 12:14 PM Page 7 of thousands of Americans who has suffered tremendously under the status quo. Fourteen years ago, when she was 27, her newborn daughter came down with RSV pneumonia and had to be helicoptered to Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford University Medical Center. The baby stayed for a few weeks, finally got better, and the family returned home. Detherage said her family had health insurance, and that she thought it was good insurance, but then "the bills started rolling in, from all directions: the hospital, the clinics, the ambulances." In the end, after insurance, the family still owed $65,000. "We tried to pedal through it, but we just couldn't do it," remembered Detherage. The family filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy two years later. "We lost just about everything. We almost lost our house. It's taken my famiSEPTEMBER 2006 Opposite: Carole Detherage explains to the audience how, even with employer-sponsored health insurance, her family still got stuck with a $65,000 medical bill and had to declare bankruptcy. This page: Labor and healthcare activists gathered in Sacramento on Aug. 30 to urge the Governor's signature of SB 840. ly over a decade to recover from this financially. Just now, we're finally starting to get on our feet. The insurance did not protect us when we needed it." Besides patients, medical providers such as registered nurses and doctors are dissatisfied by the current system and prefer a universal plan covering everyone. "Single-payer would make my life infinitely easier," said Dr. Polly Young, a family practitioner in Oakland, Calif. who's active with the group California Physicians Alliance. "Every day I have patients that don't get the care they should." Young says that even with insured patients, the large practice she belongs to must employ an "army" of cleriW W W. C A L N U R S E S . O R G cal staff to navigate the HMO bureaucracy. "It's just an enormous drain on my time when I could be giving care," said Young. "Single-payer is an idea that's a no-brainer for any person that's trying to practice medicine today." Greg Miller, RN and also a CNA/NNOC board member at the rally, said he was heartened that SB 840 had gotten this far. "It's a huge step in the right direction," said Miller, who works as a telemetry/stroke RN in San Jose, Calif. "Whether the Governor vetoes it or not, it puts it so much more on the public agenda. Our job now is to push really hard for it." —staff report REGISTERED NURSE 7

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