Healthcare Advocate Joins UP
Link to article
– Pseudonym N=1
This N=1 will attempt to bring patient advocacy (that’s all of us) information, health policy news (Bush SOTU commentary, HR676 progress, and highlights from the health policy powerhouses such as the Kaiser Network and the Commonwealth Foundation), while inserting some healthcare quality and patient safety information here and there. But professional nursing will also be highlighted so that patients understand how nursing is the driver and the facilitator of health and health services.
N=1 frequently asserts that “as the health of nursing goes, so goes the health of the nation.”
Yesterday, George W. Bush, in the State of the Union (SOTU) address, that he would propose to essentially tax some of the middle-class employer-based health benefits in order to redistribute the monies to allow a small, but significant, percentage of the uninsured population to be able to purchase health insurance.
This is akin to burdening those not making financial advances in order that those struggling even more can purchase some minimal coverage. It doesn’t take into account those who will continue to be excluded because of pre-existing conditions, high risk, lack of employment, or any of the other situations that exclude the uninsured from the ability to purchase adequate and comprehensive health insurance. Karen Davis of the Commonwealth Fund, wrote a cogent rebuttal, and it’s worth the read to understand the ramifications of Bush’s proposal and the reasoning for rejecting it.
N=1 will keep one eye on the health policy road and one eye on people struggling to maintain their health - with or without insurance.
What N=1 advocates:
Universal healthcare is a basic right of all American citizens and residents.
Professional nursing is the essential foundation of all healthcare services.
All Americans have a right to access and to receive professional nursing.
All Americans deserve to be treated as partners in making their healthcare decisions - both individual and national (policy).
Nurses have an obligation to serve, unrestricted, as patient advocates.
Physicians have an obligation to diagnose and treat illness, injury and disease, unrestricted.
Insurers, hospitals, and other healthcare employers have usurped the practice of medicine and nursing and have imposed policies which have harmed patients and which have interfered with the professional practice of medicine and nursing.
Universal healthcare must have the following attributes:
Provided for everyone
Free from employer-based or employer-controlled enrollment
Free from conditions of participation
Free from insurance-based model of administration
Promotes preventive health care
Promotes patients as full partners in healthcare decisions
Uses a not-for-profit model of administration
Eliminates disparities in quality of and access to health care providers and services
Here’s to healthy debate and discussion here and around the tubes of the internets!
As always, readers may find extensive links resource listings on my blog, http://universalhealth.wordpress.com.