National Nurses United

J U LY | A U G U S T | S E P T E M B E R 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 11 It has been nurses who for years have brought the faces, the stories, and the agony of their patients out of the shadows into the public eye. No one better represented that devotion than one of our RN members, Melissa John- son-Camacho, who brought a stunned audi- ence to their feet at the Capitol Hill press conference introduction of the bill: "There are patients that I think of almost every day," she noted. "One young woman still lives deep in my heart. Her cancer had metastasized and her lungs constantly filled with fluid. She needed to have that fluid drained in order to breathe–to survive. I noticed that she never completely emptied the fluid from her lungs. "I asked why and was told she could only afford one drainage bag per day. These bags are very expensive and her insurance did not cover the full cost. So she was never able to fully clear her lungs and was in constant distress and pain struggling to breathe." "That young woman spent the rest of her life in unnecessary stress, unnecessary pain, and unnecessary agony. She never again was able to take a full breath. As far as I am concerned, as a nurse, this was treatment denied—treatment she needed and deserved." NNU Secretary-Treasurer Martha Kuhl, RN who works in a Northern California children's hospital relates what happens to families in an unjust system: "We had a little girl with a brain tumor. Her parents were doing everything possible. But they were having great difficulty because not only did they not have great health insur- ance, but they lived far away from a large pediatric center that could give their daughter the care she needed. They had transportation issues, they couldn't afford some of the medications their child would need. "But then, because they were doing every- thing they could to help their child, they came into the hospital one day and said 'We just got evicted for not paying our rent.' So imagine a parent desperate for their child to get the care they need, desperate for their child to survive a very serious illness, then becoming homeless. That's what a lack of healthcare can do." The patient bedside has been ground zero of a system where suffering and care denials are cashed in for shareholder payouts and corporate jets. And it has been the foremost advocate for those patients, the RNs, who have spoken out at legislative hearings and community town halls, who have knocked on their neighbors' doors, stood in front of their hospital talking to patients, or in front of markets collecting signatures. It is nurses who, year after year, rank number one in public trust and ethics, because people know that no one else fights as hard for people when they are hurting, and in need of caring, and who you can count on when at your most vulnerable. And when nurses speak, increasingly people listen. "We all need access to care in order to survive," says hospital clinic RN Michelle Gutierrez-Vo. "We can't live without health- care. From birth to death, no matter how much money you make. I think about it with my patients every day. They are one appointment, or one illness away from being homeless, all the time. People don't realize that, until it happens to them. In a country so rich, it shouldn't be like that." One special person who has long listened to nurses is Bernie Sanders. When he ran for president in 2016, NNU nurses were ever at his side. Together they emphatically made the call to end to madness and corruption of our broken healthcare system, to join the community of nations that treats healthcare as a human right, a public good, a moral obligation, a public responsibility. Simply put, where people take care of one another. It was the Sanders campaign, and the millions, especially young people, inspired, animated, and activated, and NNU members, who forced the message of Medicare for all, back into the public discourse, as an urgent need for the tens of millions still without health coverage, or making the awful choice of deciding whether to get the care they need or provide for their families. It was the explosion of a mass move- ment—with nurses at the apex of the storm— that has moved the needle past the media silence and cynicism, and the iron grip of a corporate healthcare industry on so many politicians, to bring us closer to achieving the dream of a system based on a single standard of guaranteed care, no matter what your age, gender, race, nationality, or zip code. No one underestimates the battle ahead to achieve real change, as it has forever been in our history, from abolition to women's suffrage, to union rights, to civil rights. As Bernie framed it, "the struggle will be won not on Capitol Hill but in the grassroots actions of the movement." And one thing patients, our families, and our communities can count on: Nurses will be at the center of that struggle. RoseAnn DeMoro is executive director of National Nurses United. "We can't live without healthcare. From birth to death, no matter how much money you make. I think about it with my patients every day. They are one appointment, or one illness away from being homeless, all the time. People don't realize that, until it happens to them. In a country so rich, it shouldn't be like that."

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