Nurses know that single-payer universal care is best solution
By MALINDA MARKOWITZ, RN, and BETH PERKINS, RN
The Tennessean
Tennessee Voices
June 8, 2008
Nurses hear the pleas of patients and their families every day to fix what ails the U.S. health-care system. But in the din of the upcoming November election, it can be very difficult to hear the pleas made by the American people for genuine solutions for the pain endured by so many patients and families.
Registered nurses, however, are still listening, and working to press all the candidates to take heed.
“When my 12-year-old grandson says, ‘take my allowance and buy Pawpaw’s medicine,’” Pat Petty of Nashville says she has to ask, “What is wrong with this picture?” Pawpaw is the name Pat’s young grandson attached to his grandpa, Danny Mosley, many years ago.
Now Pat’s family, like so many millions of others in America, have questions that require the attention of the nation’s leaders, as the children begin to see and hear and the extent of the crisis in health care is for their grandparents and parents. No child should have to advocate for what is a human right for all. No American should choose between medication and food or a doctor’s visit and rent.
Middle-class families, working Americans are once again shouldering a heavy load in the crisis. Pat gets frustrated as she thinks about her family’s dilemma, “If you are rich, why worry about affordable health-care coverage? Why worry about medication? You don’t have to — because you have the money.” Those who are poor may at least qualify for government-sponsored programs.
“However, if you are one of millions of Americans who work and live from paycheck to paycheck, and you are in the middle class — if you have an illness, and if you are out of work due to that illness — will you be on the streets?”
Pat faithfully goes to work every day and just as faithfully votes in every election.
But she is not seeing that faithful attention to responsible living rewarded or honored. Instead, she struggles to make ends meet and gently rebuffs the offerings of her grandson to chip in for Pawpaw’s medications.
There is another way, and Pat knows it. Nurses know it. The American people know it. That way is a truly universal plan. It is single-payer, guaranteed health care for every single American, a form of an expanded and improved Medicare for all. A bill in Congress, H.R. 676, would create just such a plan. It already has the support of 90 members of Congress, more than any other health-care reform bill.
Support for the bill has grown steadily over the past few congressional sessions as co-sponsors hear from their constituents that the current system is claiming more lives than the war in Iraq.
For RNs and for mothers and grandmothers like Pat, that just will not be tolerated. Pat closed, “Who gives the right to insurance companies to play God? What gives the right to insurance companies the right to play doctor? When did insurance companies go to medical school and study and learn the Hippocratic Oath? What gives the insurance companies the right to deny an individual the right to affordable, adequate health care? Are the insurance companies playing God? You are born. You are a healthy baby. You grow up. You think that you are going to live a long healthy live. Then, one day, you get sick.”
As the nation moves toward November’s election, voters like Pat — and their nurses — will undoubtedly be voting according to their values and what they know are their human rights. Health care holds its position on that list of rights and on the list of issues that will draw the attention of millions of voters throughout the land.
Malinda Markowitz, RN, is co-president of the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association. Beth Perkins is a registered nurse in Nashville and National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association member.