This year's extended primary just might be great for healthcare reform as the Clinton campaign's failure may have killed off the terrible idea of insurance mandates.  She ran on it, and lost---just like Arnold did in California last year.

If so, great news all around.  Working people, already struggling, will not face the prospects of having their wages garnished to pay off Blue Cross' inflated premiums, overhead, and denials.  Healthcare reformers can focus their work towards enacting genuine solutions, rather than fighting off this insurance marketing scheme masquerading as health care policy.  And all of us can debate the real issues at hand here, like the new report finding the number of underinsured is spiking as our healthcare system continues its death-by-insurer spiral.

We'll take a look at this and updates from single-payer movement below!

In an extraordinary convention just concluding in Puerto Rico, here's what you didn't hear from Andy Stern's paid PR blitz.  SEIU was under siege throughout by protest encampments of the popular Puerto Rican Teachers' Union, responding to SEIU's raid of the island's largest  union-- during a strike to improve horrific educational conditions.  

Inside the convention, to the detriment of the overall labor movement,  Stern successfully squashed  the internal dissent by SEIU's democracy activists, thereby further concentrating power in himself.  The CEO model.

And in an extraordinary development, Stern announced that  SEIU is basically doing away with labor reps in favor of outsourced call centers...which makes sense, in that if you sign no-strike promises to your employer, why would you need to mobilize your members?  

There's more!  SEIU is continuing its war against state and national RN unions by now picking up John McCain's frame of attacking "government-run healthcare" as their latest salvo against the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (AFL-CIO).  If anyone doubted SEIU's willingness to sell out genuine healthcare reform in a second, there it is.

Details below...

Attendees of the SEIU Convention in Puerto Rico are facing a protest encampment and multiple pickets by Puerto Rican teachers, parents and schoolchildren, furious at Andy Stern and his  North American union for their efforts to bust a historic strike and take over the independent Puerto Rican Teachers Union (FMPR--Fdederacion de Maestros de Puerto Rico).  

Labor Notes is on the scene:

 The Puerto Rican convention center hosting the Service Employees International Union's big confab is kind of an eerie cross between Superman's Fortress of Solitude and a prison in some isolated part of rural California. The entire complex was fenced in or gated off, with police and security guards posted at every entrance.  Apparently the looming threat is the Puerto Rican teachers, whose union is known by its Spanish acronym FMPR. About 100 teachers gathered outside the convention center Saturday morning to protest SEIU's raid on their union (read the full story from the February Labor Notes). In January the FMPR was decertified by the Puerto Rican government for authorizing a strike. The decertification coincided with SEIU's announcement that they were affiliating a rival teacher union and making plans to scoop up Puerto Rico's 40,000 teachers.

Today, May 14th, is the 119th anniversary of the passing away of Mary Seacole, the Mother of Social Justice nursing.

RNs now celebrate Mary Seacole Day as part of National Nurses Week--and as the day we honor the social justice aspect of the work of nurses.   Mary Seacole remains an important inspiration for the national nurses movement being built by CNA/NNOC (California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee), which focuses on improving patient care and safety in hospitals and on bringing this country the guaranteed, single-payer health care that our patients deserve.  

...cross-posted at the Guaranteed Healthcare blog...

SEIU 1199, the New York-based local closely associated with Int'l Pres. Andy Stern, has decided to put their muscle behind Republican NY Senate President Joe Bruno and his Republican caucus, and apparently committed to working to ensure that Democrats do not regain control of the chamber.  The Albany Times Union reports:

The union will provide resources exclusively to the GOP this fall, the person said.  Union leaders, joined by key health care industry figures, met Friday with Sen. Bruno to discuss how to help the GOP hold control.

The Reps hold the Senate in this blue state by a 32-30 margin, which is very bad news for a wide range of progressive causes, especially healthcare.  This SEIU-Repbulican deal is instructive for those following the debate within the labor movement between Andy Stern's SEIU and the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, much of which turns on the political profiles of the unions and on CNA/NNOC's work towards guaranteed healthcare.  

A major reason for the increasing controversy surrounding SEIU International has been their lack of commitment to genuine healthcare reform--and in fact their active attempts to undermine and sink patient-centered, single-payer reforms.  

Progressive elements in the labor movement (and their own union) have long been aware of this problem, as have healthcare and single-payer activists around the country.  

This story is now entering the wider public discussion as SEIU International embarks on new partnerships with corporate America and, all too often, Republican power brokers.  We'll take a look, below, at their latest partnership, this one with the National Federation of Independent Business and the National Association of Realtors, to support a bill that hurts patients in the name of increasing insurance corporation profits--and, perhaps, winning employer sanction for SEIU organizing.

...for more background, please visit the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee's new site, ServingEmployersInsteadofUs.

This week in Ohio there was a major victory for democratic, member-led, social justice unionism.  A hospital chain hand-picked a union, SEIU, which is known for being friendly to employers, and attempted to impose this company union on employees without a democratic process or any show of support among workers.

Local nurses, together with the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association, started an effort to block this anti-democratic, top-down deal and were successful--in a major victory for RNs, patients, and healthcare reform.

Story below the flip

Until we get rid of the health insurance corporations, we can at least fight back, shame them, and force them to do the right thing.

We did with the tragic story of Nataline Sarkisyan.

And now, Kim Kutcher enters the stage.

She's in full-on patient revolt mode, working with fellow nurses to get the back surgery she needs to avoid a lifetime of disability.  We'll take a look at what's happening and why.  It's an important template that someday might help your friends or family--and ask you to lend a hand, or at least a couple of dialing fingers.

...cross-posted at the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association's Breakroom Blog...