America's RN Union Targets Congressional Healthcare Leaders in New Ad Drive

The National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses
Association (NNOC/CNA), the nation's largest RN union and
professional association, today announces a national online
advertising campaign beginning this week that calls on key
Congressional leaders to protect the public - not
the profit motives of the insurance industry - through a
system of guaranteed, single-payer healthcare reform. The
ads are also sponsored by the Massachusetts Nurses
Association. View the blog ad, the first phase of the
campaign, www.CalNurses.org.

The ads ask supporters of reform to send a message to Sens.
Max Baucus and Ted Kennedy and Reps. Henry Waxman, George
Miller, and Charlie Rangel-each of whom chairs key
committees with oversight on healthcare reform-urging them
to support the "nurses' plan" for guaranteed healthcare, as
reflected in HR 676 by Rep. John Conyers and S. 703 by Sen.
Bernie Sanders, which would expand and update Medicare to cover
everyone.

A major barrier to comprehensive reform, the ads emphasize,
is healthcare industry contributions which nurses say influence
the decision by some to craft proposals that cater to the whims
and financial interests of the insurers. And, they say, nurses
have had enough.

"We all know the incredible financial and lobbying resources
that health insurance and pharmaceutical companies bring to the
table in Washington," said Malinda Markowitz, RN, co-President
of NNOC/CNA, "but every voter is also a patient who deserves
reform that will protect our families and heal our nation.
Healthcare reform is too important to let the insurance industry
once again corrupt the democratic process that nurses and
patients are relying upon."

The campaign will continue through May 13, when hundreds of
nurses from around the country will mark Nurses Week with a
march and rally in Washington urging guaranteed healthcare and
major patient safety improvements. The blog ads will run on
national and local websites.

This effort is part of a national campaign that has seen
thousands gather in recent weeks outside the six White House
Forums on Healthcare to demand the single-payer,
Medicare-for-all approach be at least a central part of the
national debate on major reform. National systems, such as
proposed in HR 676 and S. 703 are flourishing in every other
industrialized democracy - the main reason why the
U.S. lags far behind other nations in key healthcare barometers
though it spends more than twice as much per capita than all
other countries.

A single-payer system, says NNOC/CNA, is the most effective
reform to assure universal coverage, choice of doctor, and real
cost controls that will end the financial and healthcare
insecurity faced by American families and American businesses.

Under a single-payer system, patients choose from among
competing doctors and hospitals, which are paid from a
universal, non profit health coverage fund, with no co-pays and
deductibles, real cost controls that eliminate waste and fraud,
and comprehensive benefits for less than we and our employers
pay now.

Single-payer reform would also promote economic recovery by
creating 2.6 million net jobs and more than $300 billion in new
business and public revenues, according to a January study by
the Institute for Health and Socio-economic Policy, the CNA/NNOC
research arm.