California Nurses Association – Page 3

US Healthcare History: Our Very Own Killing Fields

By Donna Smith – Jenny Fritts was 24 years old. Jenny lived with her husband Sean for the past five years, and together they had a little girl named Kylee, 2. Jenny was seven-and-a-half months pregnant with her second child – a beautiful, baby girl. Jenny is dead. Jenny’s unborn baby is dead. They died…

Insurance Claims Denied (Video)

Bob Schieffer interviews Donna Smith from the California Nurses Association and Robert Zerkilbach of AHIP on a new report on insurance claims. Watch CBS News Videos Online

Why the Current Bills Don’t Solve Our Health Care Crisis

By Rose Ann DeMoro & Michael Moore – Now we know why they’ve stopped calling this health care reform, and started calling it insurance reform. The current bills advancing in Congress look more like rearranging the deck chairs on the insurance Titanic than actually ending our long health care nightmare. Some laudable elements are in…

AFL-CIO Convention Endorses Single-Payer

Unanimous Vote for Medicare-for-All Reform PITTSBURGH – In a historic vote that adds the nation’s leading voice of American workers to a broad national campaign, the AFL-CIO voted unanimously at its national convention here today to endorse the enactment of single-payer, universal healthcare for all Americans. The resolution was sponsored by the California Nurses Association/National…

Data Reveals California’s Private Insurers Deny 21% of Claims

From Democracy NOW! – President Obama begins his final drive for healthcare reform tonight with a nationally televised prime-time address to a joint session of Congress. His speech comes after an explosive August recess consumed by raucous town halls and talk of government-run “death panels.” We take a look at California’s “real death panels.” That’s…

California’s Real Death Panels: Insurers Deny 21% of Claims

PacifiCare’s Denials 40%, Cigna’s 33% in First Half of 2009 More than one of every five requests for medical claims for insured patients, even when recommended by a patient’s physician, are rejected by California’s largest private insurers, amounting to very real death panels in practice daily in the nation’s biggest state, according to data released…

Let’s get back to what health care reform should be about

By Rose Ann DeMoro for the Cleveland Plain Dealer – From the fabricated “death panels” scares to the traumatized seniors urging legislators to keep the government’s hands “off my Medicare,” it’s apparent that the health care debate has lurched off the rails. We’ve lost sight of families like Nathan Wilkes’ who, introducing President Barack Obama…

Report on Medicare’s 44th Birthday, July 30, 2009

Over one thousand single-payer activists descended on Capitol Hill on July 30th, 2009 to celebrate Medicare’s 44th Birthday as concurrent actions planned across the country and on the Hill culminated to pay great tribute to the nation’s most popular social program that is indeed the largest single-payer in the country of hospitals and doctors. The…

CNA’s Donna Smith, National Organization of Women’s 2009 Woman of Action

From blog.aflcio.org – Donna Smith, a community organizer and legislative representative for the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), was recently honored as the National Organization for Women’s (NOW’s) 2009 Woman of Action. Smith first came to the public’s attention in Michael Moore’s 2007 movie, “SICKO.” Despite having health insurance and even a health…

Baucus 13 Settle Charges

Legal charges against the “Baucus 13” were settled in a series of court hearings held earlier this week. The 13 were charged with disruption of congress after they attempted to speak on behalf of single payer healthcare reform at two Senate Finance Committee hearings on healthcare in May. Senator Baucus, the chair of the Finance…