Campaign for Nurse Driven Healthcare Solutions

American Healthcare: What is really the problem?

Enactment of a national law has not solved the healthcare crisis:

• Healthcare costs for American families have doubled in the past nine years.
• Medical bills account for more than 60 % of personal bankruptcies.
• Big insurance giants deny more than one-fourth of all claims.
• More employers are dropping or reducing health coverage and shifting more costs to employees.
• Growing numbers of people delay basic medical care, waiting until they arrive in overcrowded emergency rooms.
• Children are showing symptoms of diseases long associated with adults.

The Other side of America

While the world remembers America as the “land of milk and honey”, the champion of democracy, a super power, and a big brother to the world; its internal socio-economic problems on housing, hunger, healthcare, education and jobs, give a picture that is almost close to the third world:

• One in five children lives in poverty.
• Nearly 700,000 homes were foreclosed (in the first quarter of 2011 alone)
• Homelessness, substandard housing hunger and near hunger exist in every American city
• Some 15 % of US households, 17.4 million families or about 50 million people were too poor to buy adequate food last year (US Department of Agriculture)
• More than a third of these households, with as many as one million children were missing meals on a regular basis

(Source: www.mainstreetcontract.org )

Main Street Contract for the American People

National Nurses United (NNU) has embarked on a campaign to reverse national priorities and policies that have placed the interests of Wall Street over the crisis facing American families today. The goal is to chart a new contract for the American people, for a better life today and a more secure future for our children and future generations.

The key provisions:

• Jobs at living wages for everyone
• Guaranteed healthcare for all
• A secure retirement with the ability to retire in dignity
• Equal access to a quality education
• Good housing and protection from hunger
• A just taxation system where corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share

The Nursing Office.Com has joined this national campaign as it unveils its program on Nurse Driven Healthcare Solutions basically to reduce healthcare cost and deliver healthcare to communities through massive Public Health Education.

Nurses Role in Healthcare

Nurses have long fought for a more humane healthcare system based on individual patient need, not ability to pay. More than ever, nurses play a major role on issues of healthcare providing solutions for a healthier tomorrow. We are gaining significant momentum as professionals. This is indeed a compliment and empowerment to us and yet on the other hand, a call of a challenge to us in caring for the American people as well as the international community. How big and how important can this challenge be? Do we have an answer for that? Yes, we do, and yes, we will!

As the new Healthcare Reform Act take effect, The Nursing Office.Com takes the challenge to promote solutions that are based on the evidence and actual experiences of nurses who are behind the scenes of healthcare. It is the time for us to come forward and be in charge of a domain that is always, and rightfully, ours. We have managed through those years, though it was not recognized. This time, we will take the responsibility and leadership to show our wisdom. We will stand up and define our roles. We will no longer be in the background but rather, we will be visible as we walk our talk.   We will re-think why it failed and why we need reforms. We will come up with our own nurse driven solutions, initiatives and programs to support a massive change in our healthcare so that we may deliver affordable healthcare to the American people and to the international community.

US Healthcare Reform

Why we need Health Care Reforms

Rising healthcare costs, increasing numbers of uninsured and underinsured individuals and disparities in healthcare access and quality have created an emerging national consensus that the health care system is failing and is no longer sensitive to the needs of the American people in this current state of economy and hence, must be reformed. Any solution must involve ensuring that the supply of nurses is adequate to make universal access to care a reality. 

These kinds of reforms have to come from the legislative order, however, nursing organizations, health care coalitions, the media and other civic participants and stakeholders need to be involved in the process of finding facts and designing a resolution that is truly viable.

Health Care Bill Passes the House

November 7, 2009

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a massive overhaul of the American health care system Saturday night by a vote of 220 to 215.

The $1.3 trillion-dollar bill would require individuals to buy health insurance, and would also require medium and large businesses to provide it to their employees. Consumers would be able to buy their insurance on an exchange, which would include a public insurance option for people who do not have access to insurance through their jobs. Low- and middle-income families would receive government subsidies to purchase insurance, which would be paid for through tax increases on individuals making more than $500,000 per year, as well as fees on medical providers. The bill would prohibit insurance companies from dropping or denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions or cost of care.

The bill would also reduce drug costs for seniors, prevent insurance companies from charging women more than men for the same coverage, and would allow young adults to stay on their parents' insurance until their 27th birthdays.

In a statement late Saturday, President Barack Obama thanked the House for its work in passing health care reform and said he is "confident" the Senate will follow suit, adding, "I look forward to signing comprehensive health insurance reform into law by the end of the year."

Source: www.aol.com 11/07/09