Guaranteed Healthcare

With an unusual overflow crowd of more than 200 people, the House Education and Labor Committee, sub-committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions heard testimony from Geri Jenkins, RN, co-president of CNA/NNOC, during its historic convening of an official hearing on single payer healthcare reform yesterday. Jenkins provided members with the RNs' perspective on the failings so rampant in healthcare delivery today and how a single payer system would address those failings.

Nurses, doctors, and patient advocates have long demanded such a hearing and debate, for the simple reason that there is no logic by which you can defend our current system—and political expediency is not a sufficient answer to ignore the strengths of the best solution to our healthcare crisis.  

Yesterday's hearing marked an important start to this debate and in the words of Chairman Andrews "This is the beginning of the conversation, not the end."  Which is wonderful, because as Nurse Jenkins said, "People talk about evidence based practice, we need evidence based policy."