National Nurses United

because they couldn't afford to seek earlier treatment. We need S.B. 562 to move forward now." Nurses remain undeterred. According to lawmaking rules, Rendon still has the power to move the bill forward, and nurses, healthcare activists, and allies have pressed on in staging pro-S.B. 562 rallies, demonstrations, and local town halls in order to put as much public heat as they can on him and the corporate Democrats to take up the bill. RNs held numerous actions in Sacramento the last week of June and in July, showed up at Rendon's local offices on June 27, and held a town hall in Rendon's Southern California district on July 8. On July 11, nurses and activists held their own mock health assembly commit- tee meeting in Sacramento, allowing patients to give testimonials about how single-payer healthcare in California would save their own and their families' lives and skewering recalcitrant politicians and insurance industry executives. "They want the residents of California to wait until when? Next year? That may be too late," said Cathy Kennedy, a Kaiser neonatal intensive care RN and a CNA board member. "Wait? We can't wait. People are going to die. That young child needs the help. We've got insurance companies in our way. This is wrong. The delay is wrong…I say healthcare too long delayed, is healthcare for all denied." The failure of California's two-thirds majority Democratic Legis- lature to pass a single-payer state system is especially galling at a time when some 70 percent of the electorate supports such a Medicare-for-all system, according to the results of a new CNA- sponsored public opinion poll conducted in May by the Tulchin Research firm, from a survey of 600 likely November 2018 Califor- nia voters. Also, a research study of S.B. 562 released May 31 by a team of economists at the Political Economy Research Institute at Universi- ty of Massachusetts, Amherst found that a single-payer system in California would cut current healthcare spending by about 18 per- cent and cost $331 billion annually, while at the same time covering all state residents. California currently already spends about $368.5 billion on healthcare, while leaving some 2.7 million people unin- sured and 12 million people underinsured. "In sum, the establish- ment of the Healthy California single-payer system will generate financial benefits for both families and businesses at all levels of the California economy," wrote the authors, led by Dr. Robert Pollin, along with Drs. James Heintz, Peter Arno, and Jeannette Wicks- Lim. "For families at most income levels and for businesses of most sizes, these financial benefits will be substantial. These benefits are in addition to those that the residents of California will achieve through having universal access to decent healthcare." In light of the massive healthcare cuts that Republican legislators want to make at the federal level by repealing Obamacare and fur- ther defunding Medicaid and Medicare, single-payer advocates across the country and in California say the right time for states to move ahead with establishing such systems is now. New York has already passed single-payer legislation, and advocates have high hopes that California, the world's sixth-largest economy, can do the same and provide a model that can be adopted in other states. Because of the needless suffering that they see every day, nurses will never give up the fight for single payer. "I am here because I believe that healthcare is a right for everyone," said Rosemary Now- den, a labor and delivery RN from Roseville, Calif. "The patients that I take care of, in labor and delivery, a lot of them come to us with no prenatal care…I think everyone should have coverage. I think it should be illegal that our government would not supply cov- erage to everyone, and single-payer is the way to go." M AY | J U N E 2 0 1 7 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 N A T I O N A L N U R S E 23 "Wait? We can't wait. People are going to die." —Cathy Kennedy, a Kaiser neonatal intensive care RN and a CNA board member.

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