RN Leader To Testify At Congressional Hearing Wednesday On Single-Payer Healthcare Reform

Main Category: Nursing / Midwifery
Article Date: 10 Jun 2009 - 2:00 PDT

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A co-president of the nation's largest organization of registered nurses will testify Wednesday in the first official public hearing in Congress on single-payer healthcare reform.

Geri Jenkins, RN, co-president of the 86,000-member California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, and a practicing RN at the University of California San Diego Medical Center, is expected to describe how the nation's healthcare meltdown is a "patient care crisis" and how single-payer reform best meets the goals identified by President Obama for reform of the broken system.

What: "Exploring the Single-Payer Healthcare Option"
Who: Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee Hearing
When: Wednesday, June 10, 10:30 a.m.
Where: 2175 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington

Wednesday's hearing follows weeks of grassroots activism from coast to coast by nurses and other single-payer advocates demanding that single-payer reform be part of the public policy debate.

Recent actions have included rallies and protests in over 50 U.S. cities by single-payer supporters, the arrests of 13 nurses, doctors, and consumer activists for speaking out at the Senate Finance Committee, and scores of single-payer proponents turning out at White House forums and house parties. (See the Washington Post report)

HELP is a subcommittee of the House Committee on Education and Labor chaired by Rep. George Miller who Jenkins today praised as "a longtime champion of patients, nurses, and American families. We are grateful the HELP subcommittee has convened this important hearing and provided a critically needed public airing of the best alternative for repairing our healthcare system."

Source
California Nurses Association