Health Care

Safe Staffing ...

"There Oughta Be a Law..."

Are nurses expected to care for too many patients at a time?

Throughout the state of Ohio, nurses and patients are raising concerns over inadequate staffing levels
in our hospitals. Not enough nurses on staff and long, demanding work shifts are affecting the level of
care provided by nurses. Cleveland Jobs with Justice has joined with healthcare workers, community
groups, unions, seniors organizations, student groups and religious organizations to demand safe
staffing levels in our hospitals. While many units in many hospitals are staffed safely, some are not. To
correct this, nothing short of a state law requiring safe nurse-to-patient ratios is acceptable.

Hospitals in Ohio must be required to maintain safe nurse-to-patient ratios, of no less than:

1:4 on Medical/surgical units
1:2 on Critical Care units
1:3 on the Pediatric unit
1:1 on Labor & Delivery
1:4 in the ED (1:2 for critical patients in the ER)
1:3 in Step Down and Telemetry

Safe staffing means fewer complications, fewer infections, a lower mortality rate, more nurses
practicing nursing, fewer workplace injuries, and better care for patients.

A Call for Action: To Restore and Ensure Medicare's Health - by John
Gallo, Senior Voice

Medicare, the federal social insurance program guaranteeing health care to
older people and people with serious disabilities has been treasured for
decades by most Americans. But a law enacted five years ago is now
undermining it. A multi-prong assault on Medicare is under way. It must be
halted and reversed.

Developed with stealth and marketed deceptively, the so-called "Medicare
Modernization Act" of 2003 (MMA) is looting Medicare's trust funds and
undermining the public's confidence in Medicare as it chips away at this
efficient, publicly accountable program, aiming to atomize it by gradually
moving its beneficiaries into the profit oriented private insurance market.

The 1965 creation of the Medicare program was one of the most far-reaching
and successful initiatives of the vision of a Great Society. By providing health
care coverage to older Americans through a government-based program, the
United States advanced the nation's aspiration to end poverty and promote
equality. The Medicare program currently provides 43 million older adults and
people with disabilities access to care and security from the costs of serious
illness.

Since Medicare's creation, its foes have searched for ways to make it more
profitable for private health insurance companies, even though it might thus
become less secure for the people it covers. These companies see Medicare
as a highly lucrative financial opportunity, not as the bedrock of reliable
coverage for older Americans and people with disabilities. Actions that would
undermine its social insurance principles have often been masked by the
pretense of saving it.

Five years ago, these opponents of public health insurance figured out how
they could ruin traditional Medicare over the course of a few years. They
succeeded in turning their scheme into law in 2003 when Congress passed,
and the President signed, the MMA.

A new and much needed Medicare prescription drug benefit, Medicare Part D,
was the bait to win the MMA's adoption. Part D's design, however, brought
into Medicare an inefficient, costly, and confusing reliance on private plans.
Meanwhile, the drafters also added numerous other provisions calculated to
undermine Medicare and to benefit private corporations. These provisions
dramatically increased the role of private Medicare plans and provided a
tremendous new source of public Medicare funds for private industry.

The attacks on the structure and inclusiveness of Medicare reflect many
opponents' hostility to all public health insurance. Traditional public Medicare
is seen as a threat - an example of a successful government program that
might be extended to everyone. Rather than identifying and addressing the
causes of medical cost inflation, opponents of traditional Medicare have
actually increased costs enormously, enacting over $150 billion in
overpayments to private Medicare plans. Ignoring these unnecessary, lavish
expenditures, they then proceed to highlight future expenses facing Medicare
and assert that such costs would make universal health care unaffordable.

But there is new hope. Recognizing that beneficiaries and doctors are more
important than overpayments to private Medicare plans, Congress recently
overrode a presidential veto and cut some of those overpayments. Next,
Congress needs to undo all of the damaging provisions of the Medicare
Modernization Act. Otherwise, the nation could still lose not only Medicare,
our only national health insurance, but also the possibility for universal health
coverage.

We call on the Congress and the next President to undo the MMA's damage.
The accompanying appeal lists six steps vital for preserving Medicare as the
successful program that brought health care to older and disabled people and
for safeguarding its political viability as an essential element of the
foundation for universal coverage.

We welcome other organizations to join us in this effort. Click here for a
petition.