Registered nurse members of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United (CNA/NNU) will gather in San Diego on Friday at Congress member Susan Davis to say no to Fast Track legislation—which will soon come up for a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Nurses are calling on Davis to vote “No" on the legislation, due to the negative public health impacts Fast Track legislation heralds, if it allows the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to slide right through Congress, unchallenged. Fast Track forces Congress to give up authority to amend risky trade deals such as the TPP—an impending, secretive agreement between the U.S. and 11 other countries. That is dangerous, nurses say, because it means there is no possibility to improve sections that jeopardize public health.

“Nurses know firsthand risky trade deals negatively impact the health and safety of everyone in this country.  We are against the TPP because it will drive up the cost of prescription medications.  Many of our patients already are struggling with the high cost of prescriptions. They can not afford further increases for basic medications," said Sue Phillips a nurse who works at Palomar Medical Center.  “We are asking Rep. Davis to vote ‘No’ on Fast Track, in the name of public health.”

What: CNA/NNU nurses lobby Rep. Susan Davis
When: Friday, June 5, 10:30 a.m.
Where: Office of Rep. Susan Davis, 2700 Adams Ave, San Diego, CA 92116

“We expect Rep. Davis to be a champion on this issue. We can not have a country where senior citizens, diabetics, cancer patients, HIV and AIDS patients, and families are not going to be able to buy affordable medications,” says Julie Mello, RN from University of California. “Fast Track and the TPP pull the rug out from under the health of our communities. Nurses are standing up, on behalf of our patients and the public at large, to say they must be stopped.”

Nurses point out that today’s “trade” agreements impose constraints over matters that impact everyday life and have more to do with entrenching corporate power than they do about trade. For example, of the TPP’s 29 chapters, only five are about trade. RNs are particularly concerned about the aspects of the TPP, learned through leaked documents, that threaten to give giant healthcare corporations the right to privatize national healthcare systems and pharmaceutical companies the ability to inflate drug costs. Nurses call on Rep. Davis to stand with them and oppose Fast Track passage of this risky deal.