ome 18,000 California registered nurses, members of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United (CNA/NNU), who work at 86 Kaiser Permanente hospitals and clinics are voting this week on a new contract. The agreement, reached after months of negotiations, will give the RNs a stronger voice on patient care and provides breakthrough improvements in workplace protections.
Members of the National Nurses United union are joining a growing number of industry voices that decry the increasing amount of violence that healthcare workers face on a daily basis, reports ABC News' Tampa, Florida, affiliate.
National Nurses United wants lawmakers to force all hospitals to implement policies that protect healthcare workers from violence. The union calls violence towards nurses in hospitals an epidemic.
"Wellness" programs have long been oversold as a mechanism to improve health in the workplace, the alleged reason why they were encouraged in the Affordable Care Act. But NNU has long viewed them as scheme, heavily promoted by corporate employers, whose real purpose was to promote the growing practice of health coverage cost shifting from employers to workers, including nurses.
A single-payer system akin to the Medicare program or Canada's national healthcare. The study found that the $375 billion saved annually with a single-payer system could be used to cover all of the nation's uninsured and upgrade coverage for millions of under-insured citizens.
Americans who are serious about addressing income inequality have long recognized that the United States needs a Robin Hood Tax – a charge on financial transactions proposed by campaigners who have argued since the Wall Street meltdown of 2008 that “banks, hedge funds and the rest of the financial sector should pay their fair share to clear up the mess they helped create.â€
Private nonprofit hospitals, which benefit from huge tax breaks, fail to care for the East Bay's poorest residents — and now one public hospital is on the verge of collapse.
For decades, registered nurses at Daughters of Charity Health System have outlasted wars, pestilence and even earthquakes to fulfill their mission of serving the indigent and the poor in the Bay Area and Southern California. No one alive can recall a time care was not available at the local hospitals.
Sharon Erlich and Donna Fischer, San Jose Mercury News
