Nurses march on Minnesota Capitol, demand governor restore general assistance medical care

[Better Believe It]

Nurses march on Capitol, call on governor to restore general assistance medical care
By Steve Share, Labor Review editor
October 12, 2009

ST. PAUL - Snow was falling and lots of folks were dressed in red, but while the day was Columbus Day, not Christmas, Governor Tim Pawlenty clearly was the Grinch whose unilateral budget cuts will take health care away from the state’s neediest citizens.
Several hundred union members, most of them nurses, marched on the state capitol Monday to urge the governor to restore cuts to General Assistance Medical Care.

Cuts to GAMC will leave 33,000 low-income Minnesotans without health care, said the Minnesota Nurses Association, which organized the march and a rally in the Capitol rotunda. Speakers at the rally reported that many of the people threatened with loss of their health care are veterans, the disabled, the mentally ill, or the homeless.

The rotunda echoed with chants, including, “Pawlenty, Pawlenty, it’s not fair. Everyone deserves health care” and “Pawlenty’s greed hurts those in need.” Nurses also were blowing shrill, loud whistles.

“Watch out Minnesota, when nurses get mad,” said Linda Slattengren, R.N., president of the 20,000-member Minnesota Nurses Association, as she addressed the rally. She said Pawlenty’s cuts to GAMC were “outrageous” and “unethical.”


Snow fell as several hundred marchers climbed the capitol steps chanting “Pawlenty, Pawlenty it’s not fair. Everyone deserves health care.”


Julie Combellick, (above), an RN at Immanuel St. Joseph Hospital in Mankato, blew her whistle. Tiny Macheel, (below, center), a 20-year state employee who works as a psychiatric nurse at the Community Behavioral Health Hospital in Fergus Falls, said, “This is very important. We cannot have a healthy state or healthy communities without healthy people.”



Please read the complete article at:

http://www.workdayminnesota.org/index.php?news_6_4205