The list of people and organizations opposing the Republican health care scam continues to grow. Sandy Falwell, a registered nurse in Washington, D.C., and vice president of National Nurses United (NNU), recently spoke to reporters about her objections. Here are excerpts from her comments:
As registered nurses, we recognize that this is an extremely mean-spirited and callous bill that would substantially harm our patients. We can tell you, from years of experience serving our patients at the bedside in hospitals and health care facilities, that this bill poses a mortal threat to the health and well-being of our country—all to give massive tax breaks to the richest people in this country and to the pharmaceutical and health insurance industries.
Nurses have a professional and ethical obligation to advocate for our patients, and we take that obligation very seriously. We also believe that we all have a responsibility to act as a community, together—to take care of one another. Because of this, we will continue to speak out against any plan to cut funding to Medicaid and Medicare, or to exclude any person from accessing health care due to policy or inability to pay.
Instead of kicking tens of millions of people off of health insurance, we need to move forward to the only system that will guarantee that everyone has access to safe, therapeutic health care—a single-payer, Medicare-for-all system.
It is not good enough for Democrats to simply defend the Affordable Care Act—it has left 28 million people uninsured, and allowed out-of-pocket costs for premiums, copays and deductibles to skyrocket. This is also unacceptable. Registered nurses not only oppose the deadly Republican health bill, but we are strongly urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a single-payer health care system so that every single person living in the United States has access to health care as a basic human right.
And this is what Americans want to see. A poll by Pew Research, published just last week, showed that 60% of Americans believe the federal government should be responsible for ensuring health coverage for all Americans.
On behalf of the 150,000 registered nurses represented by National Nurses United, who work at the bedside caring for everyone who lives in this nation when they are sick, I urge the Senate to continue to reject the atrocious Better Care Reconciliation Act and to instead move forward with a single-payer system to ensure guaranteed health care for all.
NNU has been outspoken in their opposition to Republican health care proposals. Read more about their specific objections.
