Guaranteed Healthcare

By Donna Smith

WASHINGTON, DC ­­­­-- The nation’s most trusted healthcare professionals published their long-awaited study this week that shows 2.6 million new jobs created following the implementation of a single payer – publicly funded, privately delivered -- healthcare system.  The National Nurses Organizing Committee and California Nurses Association study also found that establishing a national single-payer style healthcare system would provide a major stimulus for the U.S. economy by infusing $317 billion in new business and public revenues, with another $100 billion in wages into the U.S. economy.

Wow.  While the new Obama  healthcare transition team works on how to expand and protect the for-profit health insurance industry and mandate that uninsured Americans purchase coverage, nurses stayed on the side of patient advocacy and honoring the President-elect’s vision of healthcare as a basic human right .  For many years, many leaders, including Obama, have told Americans that single-payer is the right thing to do but that it is not politically feasible.  It’s too hard to make those pesky special interests take a back seat to human rights, they muse.

Single payer = 2.6 million jobs -- $317 billion in new business and public revenues -- $100 billion in wages

Nurses went to work and asked more questions to answer the call the Obama team put out to “think big” and send us the ideas you have.  It’s a ground-up sort of listening effort, the transition team promised.  The nurses have long battled for single-payer healthcare reform on the basis of patient care, patient safety and the moral imperative that their profession demands.  So taking on the task of giving this President the information he needs to back up what he knows is right was a natural undertaking.

So, now in light of these study results, if there remain those who argue a single payer system is not politically feasible, it will certainly be because of a specific and direct desire to keep the profit motive in healthcare and not the desire for a healthier and more secure nation.