JustHealth

Bonnie Martin

Lodi, California

?The laws don?t work for nurses and patients, so we have to get involved. I work to help nurses learn they need to be political. You can?t just do nothing and expect things to get better. I?d love it if we could relax and ?turn off? when our jobs are done, but the truth is that we have to get out there if we want anything to change.?

 

One of CNA/NNOC?s political campaigns that Martin supports wholeheartedly is single-payer health care. She often sees the deleterious effects of insurance company maneuvering upon her senior patients when they are at a time in their lives where they should not have to worry about how they can afford the care they require. Since most health care organizations follow stringent Medicare guidelines to determine what constitutes ?covered care,? she finds it necessary to do daily battle to prevent patients from being discharged before they are ready and able to care for themselves. ?Patients suffer from these kinds of policies, and it my sincerest hope that a single payer system of health care will go a long way towards correcting this type of social and medical injustice,? Martin says. ?Cookie cutter medicine with rigid guidelines is harmful to patients and doesn't help anyone but the insurance companies.?

David Welch

Chico, California

Welch got his own taste of the market system late last year when he applied for individual health coverage with California?s big insurers. Wanting to devote more time to CNA/NNOC and traveling, Welch had moved to per diem status and couldn?t use his hospital?s group policy anymore. He was shocked when all the insurers rejected him, deeming him uninsurable because he had had some minor skin cancer recently removed from the tip of his nose. He relies on COBRA for now, but will probably return to a job with benefits by next year even though that?s not the direction he wants to move his life.

 He said he wouldn?t be facing this dilemma if the United States didn?t let companies run healthcare for profit and instead offered universal healthcare coverage through a single-payer system that provided the same high-quality care to everyone. So as a registered nurse, Welch believes his big-picture responsibility is to help transform the healthcare system into one that works for people, rather than one that works for healthcare corporations. And nurses should be the ones leading the way. Nurses are naturally the most important players in healthcare, said Welch, and should control how hospitals run and how healthcare is organized and financed in America. ?We have the knowledge, the numbers, the direct experience,? he said. ?We are involved with every aspect of that patient ? not only their health, but the life they live and the circumstances in which they live that impact their health.?

Lauri Hoagland

Napa, California

 Lauri Hoagland remembers very well the year her life changed. At age 18, she enrolled in an AFS exchange program, intending to study psychobiology at University of California Santa Cruz upon her return home. She was sent to Högfors, a city in central Sweden, where her host parents, a family physician and a physical therapist, encouraged her to help out at their practice. ?That, for me, planted the seed of working in healthcare, in clinics, and for social change,? says Hoagland, now a registered nurse practitioner. Impressed by Sweden?s socialized medical system, she maintains that her time in Högfors was crucial in cultivating her interest in the American single-payer movement.

 

Her subsequent world travels have been equally important in maintaining and strengthening that interest. Hoagland has travelled through China, Costa Rica, Honduras, Mexico, and extensively throughout Europe and the British Isles, and like many seasoned travelers, she has found herself seeking out medical attention in a foreign country on more than one occasion. ?I?m always so thrilled to walk into a clinic in another country and be taken care of efficiently without money.?

 

?It?s a matter of fundamentally changing people?s view,? she says, emphasizing that many do not understand that having a health insurance policy is no guarantee against catastrophe. ?Even within activist groups, people can so easily phrase it as ?people need insurance.? People don?t need insurance, they need care.?

Stay tuned for more entries from CNA/NNOC Board members as they explain why single-payer is the nurses' cure for what ails America.

The problem for the Wilkes family has never been that they do not have insurance; it?s that theirs doesn?t do them any good. For the most part, the family enjoyed more affordable large-group coverage?that is, until little Thomas was born with severe hemophilia.