Bill Moyer’s Journal Focuses on Health Care and Nurses’ Role in Reform

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/05/14/bill-moyers-journal-focuses-on-health-care-and-nurses-role-in-reform/

by Mike Hall, May 14, 2008

Intensive care nurse Geri Jenkins says that a 67-year-old male patient with a history of four heart attacks, a quadruple bypass and an implanted defibrillator and about to take a high stress job “would be uninsurable for having a pre-existing condition.”

Unless, of course, he was Dick Cheney and about to become the vice president of the United States in 2001. Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association/ National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), says Cheney

can have the choice of doctors. He can go to any hospital. He can have excellent standard of care. And he’s alive today because of it. And there are a lot of people who aren’t….We, as the public, pay for Dick Cheney’s care. Why not—why is the government not providing the same type of care to all Americans?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN4KCcQ4l2Y&eurl=http://www.calnurses.org/


DeMoro and Jenkins, a member of the CNA/NNOC Council of Presidents, were featured in the May 9 edition of “Bill Moyers Journal‘ on PBS that examined the nation’s broken health care system and the role the nurses’ union is playing in the drive for health care reform.

The Cheney example of the huge inequities in who receives health care, and who doesn’t, is the centerpiece of the union’s recent ad campaign calling for guaranteed health care for all.

Reporter Rick Karr told viewers:

Some very determined people are taking up the fight for universal health care. They’re nurses—who day in and day out—encounter the human consequences of a broken system.


FULL story at link.

[alstephenson]

1. I saw this segment on Bill Moyers show.

It was GREAT. We all need and deserve "Cheney Care". Those nurses are awesome - the segment is well worth watching.

[Earth Bound Misfit]

2. K & R n/t