Bill Moyers' Journal to Feature California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee in Friday, May 9th Episode

National Nurses Movement is Leading Proponent for Single-Payer Healthcare Reforms - 'Medicare for All'

OAKLAND, Calif., May 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Turning their camera on the fastest-growing union in America -- and the nation's largest union of RNs -- Bill Moyers' Journal will feature the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee's fight for guaranteed, single-payer healthcare in an episode scheduled to air this Friday at 9 p.m. EDT (check local listings at http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/about/airdates.html).

The airing comes as CNA/NNOC, and its allies in the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Healthcare, prepare for a busy summer of healthcare organizing that includes a National Day of Action Against Health Insurance Corporations on June 19th, with a major rally outside a convention by the industry group AHIP (America's Health Insurance Plans) in San Francisco. (For more information, visit http://www.guaranteedhealthcare.org/.)

CNA/NNOC formed the Conference, along with Physicians for a National Health Program, Healthcare Now!, and Progressive Democrats of America, to advocate for the kind of guaranteed healthcare on the single-payer model that is succeeding in nearly every other industrialized democracy. The public -- and healthcare experts -- has repeatedly expressed support for this kind of "Medicare for All" reform, but politicians have been slow to catch up.

CNA/NNOC and fellow single-payer supporters have engaged in a wide variety of innovative organizing tactics in support of their healthcare proposals, including television ads targeted to all Presidential candidates and a series of print ads calling for all Americans to receive the same medical access as Vice President Dick Cheney. "There shouldn't be a double standard," says Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of CNA/NNOC, on the show. "We, as the public, pay for Dick Cheney's care ... why is the government not providing the same type of care to all Americans?"

CNA/NNOC's efforts have been supported by its rapid growth, and the creation at long last of a national nurses' movement. CNA/NNOC now represents over 80,000 RNs in all 50 states. For more information, visit http://www.calnurses.org/.

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Source: California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee

CONTACT: Shum Preston, +1-510-273-2276, or Chuck Idelson,
+1-415-559-8991, both of California Nurses Association-National Nurses
Organizing Committee

Web site: http://www.calnurses.org/

2008-05-08 18:57:29 0357280 PRNEWSWIRE