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Just
Adopt Just Health Care |
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Conversation
with
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Neal
Bisno
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Neal Bisno is vice president of District 1199P, SEIU, based in State
College, PA.
Who does your union represent?
We represent over 15,000 health care employees
in Pennsylvania. They work in hospitals and nursing homes,
mostly in the private sector. Nearly half are RNs, but we also
have service and technical workers.
Does the need for health care reform come up
in your work day to day?
Every day. My main job is organizing. We talk
with people about gaining a voice at work, but we also talk
about how health care workers need to have a voice to raise
standards in the industry and push health care back in the
right direction.
We are facing some outrageous situations. For
instance, we represent people who work for the largest health
system in western Pennsylvania. This company created its own HMO and forced all the
employees into it. Then, they charged people hefty premiums
and denied benefits to part-time employees. They manage to
exploit us as workers, consumers, and human beings all at the
same time.
A lot of health care workers say they hate the
system because it keeps them from giving patients the care they need.
Oh yes. Your typical nurse in Pennsylvania
today is working much harder than ever before to care for much
more acute patients, with less support and fewer staff. There’s
a tremendous upsurge in mandatory overtime, so nurses will
sometimes work an eight-hour shift, get held over for a second
eight-hour shift, and then have to return the next morning for
a third eight-hour shift. And while they’re working, they
don’t have much control either.
None of these problems happens by accident.
Managed care was created to deal with one issue: what is
perceived as untenable increases in health care costs. They’ve
structured this system to essentially put health insurance
companies in charge of health care, exactly because insurance
companies’ motivation is always to pay out as little as
possible. That’s how they make money.
How do your members feel about
reforming the system?
I think most health care workers are extremely
angry about what’s happening with health care, but also
confused about why it’s happening. They’ve been Harry-and-Louised just as much as anybody else.
My local is putting together a program to
educate and mobilize our members around health care reform —
we’ll be talking about both the Just Health Care plan and an
SEIU reform plan that we are working on with [Sen. Paul]
Wellstone.
The local has endorsed the Labor Party’s
Just Health Care Plan.
What’s important about the plan for
financing Just Health Care is that it’s a serious proposal
with real numbers. It’s so easy for people to oppose the
single-payer approach by saying it’s unworkable and it can’t
be financed. The Labor Party is answering that argument.
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