Skip to content

Health Care

No New Talks Planned As Three-Day Nurses Strike Starts

September 12, 2022 Michelle Wiley, MPR News. , , , , ,
Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota - Nurses at 15 hospitals in the Twin Cities and northern Minnesota began a three-day walkout Monday morning. The strike started at 7 a.m. and is scheduled to last until early Thursday morning. Union officials said no negotiations are currently planned during the strike period. Union nurses have been in negotiations since March, and working without a contract since June. The main sticking points are wage increases, retention, staffing and safety concerns, as well as addressing ongoing burnout, heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic. "The most important thing for us is safe staffing.

NYT Scolds China For Not ‘Learning To Live’—Or Die—With Covid

September 10, 2022 Jim Naureckas, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting. , , , ,
Four and a half million people. That’s how many Chinese people would have died from Covid-19 had its government taken the same approach to the pandemic that the United States has taken, and gotten the same results. Instead, China has had 15,000 deaths from Covid—most of these from an outbreak in the spring of 2022 in Hong Kong, which has its own healthcare system. Meanwhile, the United States has lost more than a million people to Covid since the pandemic began. Deaths currently continue at the rate of about 450 a day, which would add up to roughly 160,000 a year if present trends continue.

How This Rural Wisconsin County Put National Health Care On The Ballot

September 8, 2022 Kay Tillow, Common Dreams. , , ,
Dunn County, Wisconsin - Citizens of Dunn County, Wisconsin, have a plan to place national, publicly-funded health care for everyone on their November 8th county ballot.  In June and July at meetings of the County Board of Supervisors, many spoke of a broken health care system and their proposal to fix it.  After the third meeting, the Board voted unanimously to put the following question on the ballot: “Shall Congress and the President of the United States enact into law the creation of a publicly financed, non-profit, national health insurance program that would fully cover medical care costs for all Americans?” Located in central west Wisconsin and blessed with lakes and farmland, Dunn County is far from bustling cities.

Kaiser Mental Health Strike Enters Day Three With Picket Line Moving To Maui

September 6, 2022 Wendy Osher, Portside. , , ,
The mental health strike at Kaiser moves to Maui today as the open-ended event enters Day 3. Clinicians with the National Union of Healthcare Workers will hold a picket today, Aug. 31, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Kaiser Maui Lani Medical Office, located at 55 Maui Lani Parkway in Wailuku. Across the state, Kaiser Permanente mental health care workers, represented by the NUHW union began the strike Monday with picket lines in Honolulu and other locations on Oʻahu. After today’s Maui picket, the strike line will move to the Hawaiʻi Island on Thursday before returning to Oʻahu during the Labor Day weekend. Kaiser’s mental health care workers in California also have been on strike over the same issues since Aug. 15.

Shocking News Of Downtown Hospital Closure Turns To Dread

September 3, 2022 Ariel Hart, Greg Bluestein and Timothy Pratt, Atlanta Journal Constitution. , , ,
Atlanta Medical Center’s impending closure “is incredibly tragic and disruptive to the patients,” said Grady Health System CEO John Haupert. It will create “a public health emergency,” said Dr. Mark Waterman, president of the medical staff at AMC. Patients used to AMC’s services, from regular medical ailments to its links with midwife clinics, scrambled to ask each other for options. Doctors who serve emergency trauma patients spoke in fear about the closure of the only other designated “Level 1 trauma center” besides Grady, capable of treating severe injuries from car wrecks, gunshots or head injuries from falls. Even worse than the loss of the neighboring trauma center will be the loss of its emergency room, which has functioned a relief valve for Grady’s constantly overcrowded ER.

Milwaukee Cuba Caravan Highlights The Damage Caused By The US Blockade

September 3, 2022 Harry Targ, Heartland Radical. , , ,
Thirty Cuba solidarity activists heard updates, Sunday, August 28, on how the people of the island are adapting to the ongoing impacts of the US economic blockade and the recent fire at an oil depot in Matanzas, fifty miles from Havana.  Three members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation gave report backs from a recent visit to the island, which included the delivery of humanitarian assistance, part of the Hatuey Project.  The updates preceded a car caravan, one of many around the country, demanding an end to the US blockade of Cuba. Sam Doucas, Erica Steib, and Alexa 'Lex' Nutile spoke about Cuba’s justified reputation for providing health care for all of its citizens. They pointed out that Cuba’s infant mortality rate is less than that of the more developed United States. However, because of the 62-year US economic blockade, the Cuban health care system is short of vital medicines and diagnostics and surgical equipment to facilitate health on the island. To help support Cubans’ health, the three PSL members joined with others in the Hatuey Project to bring medical supplies to support maternal care on the island.

Fighting For Union Recognition And Quality Care

September 1, 2022 Mike Pappas, Left Voice. , , , ,
I’m a nurse at University of Wisconsin Hospital, University Hospital, which is their main adult inpatient hospital. I’ve worked there for 5 years. I’m on a unit called F65 and have worked there for most of my career. Prior to Covid, it was General Medicine and Geriatrics, which meant that we cared for — and we still care for this population — a lot of people with chronic illnesses that come in for exacerbations of those illnesses. Since Covid, one of our main services has been taking care of Covid patients, and that’s still ongoing. And I’m a charge nurse, which means that I supervise the flow of patients in and out of the unit, write staffing assignments and help people out as they’re going about their day. I’ve been at this hospital for the entirety of my nursing career.

15,000 Nurses To Strike As They Fight To Put Patients Before Profits

September 1, 2022 Sam Fettig and Lauren Nielsen, Minnesota Nurses Association. , , , ,
St. Paul and Duluth, Minnesota – This morning, nurses with the Minnesota Nurses Association announced that 15,000 nurses throughout the state plan to strike for three days beginning September 12, 2022, as they fight for fair contracts to put patients before profits. The strike is believed to be the largest private-sector nurses’ strike in U.S. history, and it comes as nurses have negotiated with hospital executives for more than five months and have worked without contracts for the last several months. The strike will be the first that Twin Cities and Twin Ports nurses have taken together in contract negotiations.

US Life Expectancy Drops Sharply, The Second Consecutive Decline

September 1, 2022 Kate Sheridan, STAT. , ,
Americans born in 2021 can expect to live for just 76.1 years — the lowest life expectancy has been since 1996, according to a new government analysis published Wednesday. This is the biggest two-year decline — 2.7 years in total — in almost 100 years. The Covid-19 pandemic is the primary cause of the decline. However, increases in the number of people dying from overdoses and accidents is also a significant factor. American Indian and Alaskan Native people have experienced a particularly precipitous drop in life expectancy since 2019, going from 71.8 to 65.2 years. This kind of loss is similar to the plunge seen for all Americans after the Spanish Flu, said Robert Anderson, the chief of the mortality statistics branch of the National Center for Health Statistics, a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Far Right Aims To Eliminate Trans People

August 30, 2022 Morgan Artyukhina, Liberation News. , , ,
The far right has unleashed a torrent of attacks on transgender rights with the goal of pushing trans people further into the precarious margins of U.S. capitalist society. Despite those efforts in the halls of power, working and oppressed people have embraced the fight for trans liberation and rallied in defense of LGBTQ people under attack. The latest is a bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) that would severely limit the ability of millions of transgender people to access transition-related medical care. Provocatively called the “Protect Children’s Innocence Act,” the bill would make it a felony to provide trans children with gender-affirming medical care, such as prescribing hormone blockers, hormone replacement therapy or surgery, punishable with between 10 and 25 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

Nine For-Profit Nursing Homes Pull A Simultaneous Strike

August 26, 2022 Angela Bunay, Labor Notes. , , ,
One thousand workers at nine for-profit nursing homes in Western New York held one-day strikes July 12 and 13. It’s the first time that 1199SEIU (United Healthcare Workers East) has held a coordinated strike across different nursing home employers in the region. The nursing homes had a common contract expiration date, April 30, and the workers have common demands. They want a $15 starting wage for food service workers, laundry workers, and housekeepers. “It was about calling on these for-profit owners to meet the wage standards that we have set with the not-for-profit nursing homes in the area,” said Grace Bogdonove, vice president of the union’s Western New York Nursing Home Division. Along with a $15 minimum for these service workers, the union is demanding raises for the caregivers at the bedside: both higher starting rates for new hires and wage scales for experienced caregivers.

Minnesota Nurses’ Strike Vote Puts Safety And Conditions In Spotlight

August 24, 2022 Michael Sainato, The Guardian. , , ,
Minnesota - Throughout the Covid pandemic, nurses around the US have faced deteriorating working conditions and challenges, from safety concerns to increasing workloads that have stemmed from understaffing as nurses have quit their jobs or retired early. Those nurses who are still on the job at many hospitals say they have been expected to do more with fewer resources, an issue that nurses say is causing retention crises and jeopardizing patient safety and care. Now nurses at 15 hospitals in the Twin Cities area (Minneapolis-St Paul) and Duluth, Minnesota, that are negotiating new union contracts with their respective hospitals have overwhelmingly Voted to authorize a strike. A date for the work stoppage has not been set yet by the union, the Minnesota Nurses Association, which represents about 15,000 nurses who voted on the strike authorization, but a 10-day notice must be given ahead of any strike.

How Latin America Could Inform The US Fight For Reproductive Justice

August 20, 2022 Ximena Casas Isaza and Catalina Martinez, Scheer Post. , , ,
When Dobbs vs. Jackson was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 24, overturning Roe v. Wade, the case drew all eyes to reproductive rights issues in the United States. For half a century, advocates around the world looked to Roe v. Wade as a landmark decision and advocacy model for reproductive justice. But the Dobbs decision now places the United States behind other countries that center women’s autonomy and human dignity in the regulation of abortion. As Latin American feminist advocates, we have seen firsthand how the lack of access to safe and legal abortions has impacted the life and health of many women, girls, and pregnant people across the Western hemisphere. Making access to sexual and reproductive health services a reality is a matter of social justice, democracy, and human rights.

Access To Medicines Summit Urges More Decisive Action Against Big Pharma

August 20, 2022 Lauren Paremoer and Alan Rossi Silva, People's Dispatch. , , ,
From July 19-21, activists from across the globe gathered in Istanbul for the second edition of the Global Summit on Intellectual Property and Access to Medicines (GSIPA2M). This event is a biennial gathering organized by the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC) and Make Medicines Affordable consortium to hold critical debates and discussions on ensuring that intellectual property rights don’t undermine equitable access to lifesaving medicines. At the summit, one thing became crystal clear: the challenges of the Access to Medicines (A2M) movement are diverse and enormous. They include Big Pharma’s unstoppable greed and influence over governments, multi-stakeholder initiatives usurping the role of UN institutions, and insufficiency of national-level laws and institutions.

Biden Preparing To Shift Costs Of Covid Treatments, Vaccines To Patients

August 20, 2022 Kenny Stancil, Common Dreams. , , ,
Advocates for a more just healthcare system responded with alarm to Thursday reporting that the Biden administration is taking steps to stop paying for Covid-19 vaccines and treatments in the coming months, a move critics fear will lead to higher prices and more expensive coverage, enriching pharmaceutical and insurance giants at the expense of patients. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to meet with representatives from drug manufacturers, pharmacies, and state health departments on August 30 to "map out" how to shift the bill for coronavirus jabs and therapeutics from the federal government to individuals, according to The Wall Street Journal. The looming transition that many have anticipated and resisted since the onset of the ongoing pandemic is expected to take months.
«12345678910»
assetto corsa mods

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Donate Here

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Donate Here
Sign Up To Our Daily Digest

Independent media outlets are being suppressed and dropped by corporations like Google, Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our daily email digest before it’s too late so you don’t miss the latest movement news.