Ludlow

tntrn, most responsible people want to pay their way. You have safe water to drink, electricity that comes into your house, roads that get you from your home to work and play, a safe community to live in protected by police and fire fighters. Every working person pays payroll tax; every person who purchases almost anything pays a sales tax. Gasoline is taxed to keep the roads in working order. People with cell phones pay taxes for use of the public air waves. If you fly you pay a tax that pays for air traffic control--something no one flying would want to be without. We pay property tax so that our kids can have schools in which they can get an education. Taxes make a civilized society possible. For me it is appalling that 49% of Americans make so little that they don't meet the requirements on the tax scale to pay income tax---if indeed that is the case. Getting back to the cadillac tax it initially was in John McCain's platform. Originally Obama opposed it but in his efforts to reach across the isle and be bipartisan he agreed to it. Obama: McCain Wants to Tax Your Health Insurance Originally the House passed the bill without a cadillac tax and had other funding mechanisms. But the Senate with Democrat Max Baucus and Republican Charles Grassley proposing it, included it in the final bill. It seems to spring out of the false philosophy that people with plush plans use the health care system unnecessarily. Oh, yeah, sure give me another colonoscopy. Oh and throw in some chemo too---my plan covers it all! In reality Americans go to the doctor less often and spend fewer days in the hospital than many other 1st world countries. But we are still paying twice as much. We are truly getting gipped.

tntrn, On second look I see you might be talking about the tax on insurance plans if they cost more than $10,200/yr per single or 27,500/yr per family. I agree there, that sucks and is a stupid way to get revenue. It was a concession to republicans. Many of the stupid things in the bill were concessions trying to get republican votes for the bill. The concessions were added in but not one republican voted for the bill.

tntrn, what are the 'higher taxes' you're refering to? If you have insurance and like it you can keep it. If you refuse to get insurance, you will be fined. The fine was described by Justice John Roberts as a tax. Most taxes are added to things we buy: gasoline, TVs, property. This is a tax or fine if we don't do someting: get health insurance. So I imagine those who can afford it will, as a matter of personal responsibility, buy it. Those who can't afford it will receive subsidies. Those who won't will be taxed/fined (and the fine is not that much and not much happens to you if you don't ever pay it--unless congress changes that part of the law).

I think National Nurses United is a great idea! Nurses across the country see how smart it is to have nurse to patient ratios that are based on nursing judgement not the hospital's bottom line. I work in CA and have had so many travelers tell me that they won't go back to 8 or more to 1 on the floors or 4 or more to 1 on step down or 3 to 1 in the ICU. They get that safe staffing saves lives and saves our sanity and RN licenses. Pushing for proper nurse to patient ratios is just one thing NNU does. And you can see that they have been successful by looking at the contract the HCA Florida RNs just got.

Thanks for this clear explanation of where we're at in the health care coverage world. The sooner we get to Medicare for All the happier I'll be.

Reality is that in order to push for laws that prohibit bad practices, you have to be organized and united; like a union. I know people who say, "I have my voice, one voice. I speak out and get what I need. I don't want and don't need a union like CNA/NNOC." But one voice didn't push the governor to sign the safe staffing ratios law in California or the legislature into enact it. One voice didn't get nurses who report illegal and unsafe activities of corporations who harm patients whistleblower legal protection. One voice didn't get pay that allowed nurses to be able to afford a home, send their kids to college, have decent insurance and retire with dignity because they have valuable pensions. One voice didn't get overtime pay or the 40 hour work week. Unions did.

In the case of striking for better, safer patient care, when you cross the picket line you make the statement that you are endorsing the hospital's unsafe staffing and unsafe patient conditions. Not a good place to be for a patient advocate.

we now face national hospital chains and multinational corporations. we still need the strength of the many to protect standards.

I appreciate your history and struggle, Lynnie. Thanks for putting it out there. I would just like to remind us all that we have overtime pay and vacation pay and the concept of a weekend and health insurance benefits and retirement benefits and no child laboring in coal mines and scores of other taken-for-granted improvements in life because of unions. Workers united can make tremendous valuable gains for themselves as a group and for their professions that a single worker is just not able to do. As nurses we don't do our work of healing and caring single-handedly by ourselves. Though nothing is perfect, I find it far better being in a union having fellow nurses by my side helping me solve my institutional patient care problems. I'm glad to not be going it alone.

Dragging out and delaying a first contract is bad faith bargaining. It's illegal. Hospitals do it all the time. In doing so they are just showing their true colors. They are not on our side or even on the side of our patients. They are on their share holders side, servants of the almighty dollar. Our duty is to assure safe, therapeutic care. We are in 2 totally different universes.

In the ICU we've had the mandated ratios of at least 2 patients:1nurse since the 1970s in California. Yet I have often just had one patient and at times I have cared for one patient who needed 2 nurses. Ratios are the floor and we staff richer if patients need it. But this is our fight as nurses. Administrations will want the fewest nurses possible. We have to advocate for our patients and tell administration--hey these patients require more time to get the care they deserve so let's get another nurse in here! Before the union it was "Do the best you can" or "Last shift's nurses did it, why can't you?" and all manner of like things. With the union we have ways of pushing back and getting extra nurses.

Nothing in the California ratios is meant to limit it to the specified number, richer staffing is meant to happen if the patient's care needs dictate it. Now, say, if in the ICU the ratios varied by one patient, that would be a big deal. And a big problem.

More unions = safer working conditions and safer patients. The Massey mine disaster and the BP oil vulcano-spewing-oil-into-the-Gulf-of-Mexico disaster (both needlessly killing workers) are the results of fewer workers having the power that a union would have given them to keep their work environments as safe as possible. Deregulation and union busting paved the way to such disasters. Union RNs would all much rather that the hospital move to keep patients safe like for instance by staffing to acuity within the framework of the California ratios AT ALL TIMES on their own or even when we are sitting at the bargaining table, but if we have to strike to so move them we will.

That's absolutely fabulous!

I don't EVER want to work at a non-union hospital again. Glad for my contract. Glad for my protections. Glad for my benefits and pay.