DeMoro Only Advocate for Nurses, Labor on National List

National Nurses United Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro has won national recognition once again as one of the “100 Most Influential People in Healthcare” – the only advocate for nurses or other working people on a list published annually by Modern Healthcare, a prominent national healthcare industry publication.

DeMoro, who is number 36 on the list of 100, is one of only eight people to be named to the list for each of the 11 years it has been compiled. She is also one of only two women to be named every year on a list that is dominated by figures in government and corporate healthcare institutions.

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"We are incredibly proud to see RoseAnn recognized and honored year after year for both her outstanding leadership and accomplishments and the historic achievements by our national nurses’ movement and organization,” said NNU Co-President Jean Ross, RN.

RoseAnn DeMoro with NNU leaders

At a time when Medicare has become a major issue in the Presidential campaign, including a proposal by the Republican candidates to privatize Medicare, DeMoro and NNU have been in the forefront of national efforts to best protect Medicare by expanding it to cover everyone, a point emphasized in Modern Healthcare’s report on the Top 100.

As the Supreme Court was deliberating the fate of the Affordable Care Act, Modern Healthcare noted, NNU was continuing to talk to patients across the country who still face the effects of a broken healthcare system in need of more expansive reform, as in Medicare for all.

“The stories are heartbreaking,” DeMoro told Modern Healthcare, citing just one example of an instance where a woman having a heart attack was prepared to die rather than call an ambulance because she was afraid that, if she went to the hospital, she would lose her home and her son would have no place to live.

In the past year, NNU has also been leading efforts for a tax on Wall Street speculation, also known as the Robin Hood tax,  that could raise hundreds of billions of dollars annually to help fund economic revitalization with funds for healthcare, jobs, education, and other basics.

As a recent editorial in the Chicago Gazette, a city where NNU sponsored a major march and rally for the Wall Street tax in May noted,

“Economists and progressive political leaders worldwide have been discussing the Financial Transaction Tax, popularly known as the Robin Hood Tax, for a few years, but it took a group of protesting nurses who are members of National Nurses United wearing Robin Hood hats to bring it to the attention of Chicago.”

“Why nurses? They know the money raised could affect them and their patients directly (by paying for healthcare across the country) and indirectly (by creating jobs, cutting student debt, covering mortgage foreclosures).”

Since the NNU was founded in December 2009, from the affiliation of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, former United American Nurses, and the Massachusetts Nurses Association, NNU has been one of the fastest-growing labor organizations in the U.S. winning elections for 13,000 RNs at 30 hospitals in 10 states Today NNU represents more than 175,000 RNs.

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