LISTEN: Nurses Rally for Safe Staffing/Universal Healthcare NOW!

NJ Nurses are set to rally in Trenton this week to demand safe staffing.

By Bob Hennelly

On Thursday, May 11 President Biden will end the COVID public health emergency which was declared three years ago by then President Trump. It has been widely reported that as many as 15 million Americans will lose their health insurance as the states reevaluate their Medicaid status now that the pandemic is declared over. 

Meanwhile, the nation’s healthcare system is in a deepening access and affordability crisis that Washington, Trenton, and Albany are in active denial about because the medical industrial complex is paying them to look the other way with campaign cash. There is no more important labor issue in America. As COVID proved, the lack of  affordable access to health care hit communities of color hardest where such a significant share of the essential workforce lives.

In this latest edition of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour we visit with Debbie White, RN and the president of HPAE, New Jersey’s largest healthcare union about a May 11, rally in Trenton that’s supported by the NJ AFL-CIO and a broad coalition of New Jersey’s healthcare unions calling for the state legislature to formally adopt patient to nurse ratios in the state’s hospitals.

This pro-labor measure was adopted in California in 2004 and improved patient outcomes as well as reduced workplace injuries and reduced staff turnover which actually saved hospitals money. Multiple studies have linked robust hospital staffing with successful infection control that was tragically lacking in so many of America's congregant care facilities. 

In the second half of the show, we talk to Dr. Ed Zuroweste, the founding director of the Migrant Clinicians Network, an international non-profit that serves migrant and immigrant workers. This is one physician who thinks globally and acts locally in his work for migrant workers and their families. We discuss the implications of President Biden’s ending the COVID public health emergency and how universal health care is essential in the age of the climate crisis and infectious disease outbreaks.

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