Guaranteed Healthcare

By Donna Smith, community organizer

Gardnerville and Fallon, Nevada -- Whether we were in front of a busy WalMart center or in a small diner, the nurses on the road with the Nevada Nurses Organizing Committee were educating and listening to real people with real issues.  Everywhere we went, people were open about the difficulties they confront every day in accessing and affording healthcare, and many only had limited information or misinformation about the healthcare reform plans being offered by the presidential candidates.

So while the television ads and national media try to depict the nation's biggest concerns as far more abstract and removed, here were the nurses again -- down in the trenches with their patients and fellow citizens showing common sense and intelligence along with honest answers about what we can expect in the coming administration.  Nevadans told the nurses that they are a lot like other Americans in their concerns for the future.  And having access to healthcare ranks near the top of those concerns.

I met 73 year old Bob Nelson at one of our diner stops.  Bob started his career as a firefighter as a young teenager in 1949.  After suffering a stroke and several other health problems, Bob finally retired a couple of years ago, after serving more than 50 years in a helping profession he loved.  But now, becase he cannot afford all of his own meds, he is going back to work to earn enough money to stay on his prescribed treatments.  Bob told me he will be teaching some emergency preparedness classes to newer firefighters.

At every stop, we heard from folks like Bob -- hard-working, tough-minded people who are trying to hang on to their jobs and homes, their retirement dreams and their lives in the face of mounting pressures and sometimes daunting illnesses. 

The nurses seemed to listen and instruct about what they see as reasonable and appropriate solutions for the healthcare crisis as if laying out a sort of healthcare reform discharge plan for the nation:  healthcare for all is the answer for the ailing system.  Everybody in and nobody out.  It's the plan RNs hope we'll get to if we demand it of our leaders and of one another.

For now, they'll be on the bus, around the corner, in the diners, down the block and in shopping center and hospital parking lots and out among their neighbors and fellow citizens offering a vision that can be trusted as far more free of outside influences or hidden agendas than any other reform positions citizens must wade through during election cycles. 

Just like Bob, nurses have never faded from the front lines or retreated when called into service.  And the nation's healthcare crisis has pressed them into service yet again.