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On Day Two Of The 'Fighting For One America' Bus
Tour, Senator John Edwards Discusses His Bold Plan To Provide Truly Universal Health Care

post from John Edwards for President: Full-site Feed on 24 August 2007 10:45:00 AM. © John Edwards for President: Full-site Feed

Edwards Outlines Plan to Address Nursing Crisis, Add 100,000 New Nurses Within Five Years

Manchester, NH – Today, the Edwards family continued their four-day 'Fighting for One America' bus tour across New Hampshire. Senator John Edwards discussed his bold plan to provide truly universal health care to all Americans and outlined his plan to add 100,000 new nurses within five years.

"Elizabeth and I are really enjoying our tour of New Hampshire," Senator John Edwards said. "People have been asking excellent questions and we are having detailed discussions about how we are going to build one America together."

"One of the most important issues we hear about is health care," Edwards continued. "That is why I am proud that I was the first candidate to announce a health care plan and to have the only plan that is truly universal. But to ensure every person gets quality care, we also need to address our nursing crisis. Nurses are the backbone of our health care system, but we're facing a serious shortage with dire consequences for patients and for our health care system. I will fix this crisis so every American gets quality care."

While New Hampshire has more nurses per capita than any other state, the Granite State will have about 27 percent fewer nurses than it needs by the end of the next decade. And nurses are leaving the profession -- only 62 percent of nurses in New Hampshire today are working full-time.

Below please find a fact sheet on Senator Edwards' bold plan to address the nursing crisis in this country.

Edwards continues to drive the Democratic agenda with his specific ideas to transform our country. While Washington continues to offer only rhetoric, empty talk and half-measures, Edwards is offering courage, conviction and bold ideas to build one America.

The next two days of the tour will focus on additional critical issue facing America -- providing economic fairness and rewarding work; and ending the war in Iraq and honoring our veterans.

Building One America: Addressing the Nursing Crisis to Ensure Quality Universal Health Care

"Nurses are the backbone of our health care system. We cannot provide true universal health care without strengthening that backbone. We need to make a serious investment in the nursing profession, starting today." -- John Edwards

Nurses are the backbone of our health care system, yet there are far fewer nurses than our hospitals, health clinics, and nursing homes need. As a result, Americans are paying more and getting less from their health care.

  • A Growing Nursing Shortage: By one estimate, New Hampshire needs 672 new registered nurses each year until 2014 to fill vacant positions, but the state's nursing schools graduate less than half that number yearly. By the year 2020, America will be short 1 million registered nurses. Even a state like New Hampshire, which has more RNs per capita than any other state, will have about 27 percent fewer nurses than it needs by the end of the next decade as demand for health care increases. [NHDES, 2007; HRSA, 2006; CHWS, 2006; NHNA, 2006]
  • Inadequate Staffing Threatens Patient Health: Patients undergoing routine surgeries in American hospitals are at a 31 percent greater risk of dying if they are treated in a hospital with a severe nursing shortage. The nursing shortage contributes to as many as one-quarter of hospitals' unanticipated deaths and serious injuries. Hiring more nurses could save 6,700 lives in hospitals and 4 million days of hospital care and dramatically reduce adverse outcomes like hospital-acquired pneumonia and cardiac arrest. [Aiken et al., 2002; JCAHO, 2002; Needleman et al., 2006]
  • Unsafe Working Conditions: Many hospitals have responded to the nursing shortage by increasing the number of patients that each nurse is responsible for and forcing nurses to work dangerously-long shifts -- more than 12 hours at a time. [IWPR, 2006]
  • Nurses Are Leaving the Profession: Nearly 450,000 RNs are not working as nurses today, deterred by long hours, unsafe workplaces, low compensation and a lack of respect. In New Hampshire, only 62 percent of RNs are working full-time today. [HRSA, 2006; CHWS, 2006]

    • John Edwards has offered a bold, detailed plan to take on the big insurance and drug companies to guarantee true universal health care for every American. His plan emphasizes prevention, primary care and pro-active management of chronic diseases. To ensure his plan succeeds and delivers quality health care for everyone, we must address the nursing crisis. As president, Edwards will invest the resources we need to add 100,000 nurses within five years – by bringing back 50,000 RNs who have left the profession, while retaining even more, and graduating 50,000 new nurses.

    Retaining Nurses by Respecting the Profession

    Edwards will keep skilled nurses from leaving the profession and bring back former nurses. Bringing back just 10 percent of the nurses who have left the profession will increase the number of veteran nurses serving America's patients by about 50,000. Edwards will:

  • Ensure Safe Staffing Levels: High patient-to-nurse ratios have been linked to increased medical errors, worse patient outcomes and high staff turnover. Edwards believes that we need requirements that ensure safe staffing levels, determined on a unit-by-unit level, with appropriate exceptions for emergencies. He will support hospitals in finding the nurses that they need to provide high quality care. [Aiken, 2002]
  • Eliminate Mandatory Overtime: When hospitals force nurses to work more than 12 hours at a time, it becomes difficult for nurses to provide top-quality care and they are more likely to quit their jobs. States like New Hampshire have begun to lead the way in restricting mandatory overtime, but we need a national solution. As president, Edwards will ban mandatory overtime for nurses, with limited, temporary exemptions for truly understaffed areas.
  • Improve Workplace Safety: The simple act of doing your job should not cause you harm. Edwards strongly opposed the Bush Administration's abandonment of real ergonomics standards. As president, he will implement a broad, mandatory ergonomics rule, and appoint officials who are committed to enforcing it. He will also help improve nurses' working conditions by offering resources to hospitals that commit to major improvements in nurses' working conditions - such as offering more time off, implementing new safety standards, and giving nurses a greater voice in hospital administration. He will also instruct the Department of Health and Human Services to lead a nationwide initiative on workplace safety and establish a presidential commission to recommend improvements in the nursing workplace, including protections from pandemic flu and safe patient handling.
  • Strengthen Nurses' Voices: Giving nurses a stronger voice will help keep nurses on the job. Edwards will strengthen labor laws to make it easier for nurses to organize and collectively bargain and reverse the court decision that deprived nearly 1 million of nurses and millions of other workers of the opportunity to join a union. He will also offer federal challenge grants to support responsible "magnet hospitals" that offer more training and mentoring, decent pay and benefits and give nurses a voice in hospital administration.

    • Increasing the Number of Young People Choosing Nursing as a Career

    Educating and training the next generation of health care workers is essential to meet the increased demand of a universal health care system. To add 50,000 new nurses to the profession within five years, Edwards will:

  • Add New Nurses to Critical Shortage Areas: Edwards will pay up to full tuition and fees for 50,000 new students to become nurses. In return, these nurses would agree to serve for at least four years where nurses are in critical short supply, such as rural hospitals and urban public hospitals.
  • Expand Educational Capacity: In addition, to ensure that schools have the resources to provide the new students with high-quality training, Edwards will invest to increase the capacity of the nation's nursing schools – including training and recruiting nursing faculty -- by 30 percent to meet the challenge of nursing shortage. He will also support distance learning initiatives– like the current partnership between UNH and Granite State College – that can help bring advanced training to rural areas. [Manchester Union-Leader, 8/6/2006]
  • Create Partnerships with Hospitals: Classroom training is vital, but there is no substitute for experience. Edwards will support training partnerships of nursing schools and hospitals, like medical schools already have.
  • Reach Out to High School Students: To reach a new generation of nurses, Edwards will help high schools implement career education programs in nursing that combine applied skills with rigorous academics.
  • Promote Career Ladder Programs: There are hundreds of thousands of low-wage health care workers in hospitals and home care agencies across the country with the dedication and familiarity with the field to become professional nurses – but they don't have the time or money to go to nursing school. Edwards will support Career Ladder partnerships, where employers and unions help low-wage health care workers and displaced workers from other sectors move up the skills ladder with on-the-job training, time off for training and guaranteed placement. He will build on model programs like the successful workforce development labor-government partnership in Los Angeles County. [Fitzgerald, 2006]


    • Read The Full Article:
    http://johnedwards.com/nh/20070824-nh-tour-health-care/


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    Happy Trials To You

    post from Firedoglake on 24 August 2007 10:40:55 AM. © Firedoglake

    There will be a brief filed shortly with the US Supreme Court in the Al Odah et. al. v. US cases.  I’ve spent some time reviewing a number of the matters from the DC Circuit decision that will be appealed, and I keep coming back to Kafka’s[...]

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    http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/08/24/happy-trials-to-you/


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    More on Iraq Surge Politics

    post from Daily Kos on 24 August 2007 10:28:12 AM. © Daily Kos

    Then (one year ago) in a Daily Kos interview with poli sci professors William A. Boettcher III and Michael D. Cobb:

    ...the key to maintaining or building support for the war in Iraq is to stress the likelihood of succeeding. It is not a coincidence that the Bush administration's rhetoric emphasizes "winning", "success", and "victory".  We think their argument is reasonable on its face but wrong for at least two reasons: Americans' perceptions about the goal in Iraq is more important to know than whether we will succeed in the abstract, and the Bush administration is not trusted by a sizeable portion of the population to be credible when making the case for inevitable success in Iraq.

    Now (WaPo's Jim Hoagland):

    More important, Bush has called attention to the elephant that will be sitting in the room when his administration makes its politically vital report on Iraq to the nation next month. For Americans, the most important comparison will be this one: As Vietnam did, Iraq has become a failure even on its own terms -- whatever those terms are at any given moment.

    That is, the administration has constantly shifted its goals in Iraq to avoid accepting failure and blame -- only to see the new goals drift beyond reach each time. Liberation of Iraqis became occupation by Americans, democracy became an unattainable centralized "national unity" government and this year's military surge has become a device for achieving political reconciliation among people who do not want to reconcile.

    Regardless of how the Republicans and the neo-cons try to spin this, CNN's polling supports the observation Boettcher and Cobb made a year ago about credibility. CNN says:

    A majority of Americans don't trust the upcoming report by the Army's top commander in Iraq on the progress of the war and even if they did, it wouldn't change their mind, according to a new poll...

       He added, "It does seem to indicate that anyone associated with the Bush administration may be a less than credible messenger for the message that there is progress being made in Iraq."

    How much clearer can it be?



    Read The Full Article:
    http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/147721797/6014


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    Pace May Nudge Bush on Troop Cut

    post from The Washington Note on 24 August 2007 10:24:00 AM. © The Washington Note

    Not to be beaten by Senator John Warner who called last night for the beginning of modest troop withdrawals from Iraq, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace is reportedly going to urge President Bush to cut troop levels next...

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    http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/002293.php


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    What Candidates Should Say About Israel

    post from TPMCafe - The Coffee House feed on 24 August 2007 10:19:24 AM. © TPMCafe - The Coffee House feed

    The Iowa straw poll and a good half dozen Democratic debates are behind us but the campaigns have yet to fully engage in the predictable, and by now ritualistic, arguments about who is ?better? on...



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    http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/tpmcafe-main/~3/147739145/what_candidates_need_to_
    say_on_the_middle_east


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    What Candidates Need To Say on the Middle East

    post from TPMCafe - The Coffee House feed on 24 August 2007 10:19:24 AM. © TPMCafe - The Coffee House feed

    The Iowa straw poll and a good half dozen Democratic debates are behind us but the campaigns have yet to fully engage in the predictable, and by now ritualistic, arguments about who is ?better? on...



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    http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/tpmcafe-main/~3/147739145/what_candidates_need_to_
    say_on_the_middle_east


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    Today's Must Read

    post from TPMmuckraker on 24 August 2007 10:18:32 AM. © TPMmuckraker

    Now he tells us. General Peter Pace became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2005, the first ever Marine to become senior military adviser to the president. Known as "Perfect Pete" inside the...



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    http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003987.php


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    Biting the Hand That Fed Them

    post from IraqSlogger.com on 24 August 2007 10:16:00 AM. © IraqSlogger.com

    There is much speculation in Washington these days about whether Iran will respond to a preemptive strike by the United States and/or Israel in order to damage or destroy its nuclear weapons program.

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    http://www.iraqslogger.com/index.php/post/4060


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    Bush Loves Maliki Republicans, Not So Much

    post from All Spin Zone on 24 August 2007 10:03:00 AM. © All Spin Zone

    The Bush Administration is loosing control of the message, both in the White House and among other Republicans. Could it be this is a sign of Bush's lame duck status? How long before the Presidential candidates on the Republican side follow the Barbour lobbying firm and undermine Bush's policies?

    Read The Full Article:
    http://allspinzone.com/wp/2007/08/24/bush-loves-maliki-republicans-nor-so-much/


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    I no longer fear the Kucinich Revolution: Part 3

    post from My Left Wing - Front Page on 24 August 2007 10:01:54 AM. © My Left Wing - Front Page




    Crossposted from Town Called Dobson

    click to enlarge





    In Parts One and Two, I discussed the support Kucinich has and the irrational fear also associated with electing Kucinich. Today, I want to focus on the secondary soundbite I have heard over the last few weeks about Kucinich. The Kucinich critics to have their work cut out for them because they need to go back FORTY YEARS to find something to complain about. Their soundbite is "he drove Cleveland into bankruptcy." This, it turns out, is a lie. It is a Halliburton straw man with a touch of Sopranos level intrigue.

    Dennis Kucinich started out as the Mayor of Cleveland in 1977 - the youngest Mayor of a large city in America. The city was hip deep in trouble with it's finances and crime. Not to mention, when Kucinich was sworn in, Cleveland was in one of its worst snow storms with winds of over 100 miles per hour - a sign of things to come.

    He made good appointments and bad appointments for his administration and one of those, the Chief of Police, Richard Hongisto, proved to be real bad. The fiasco went so terribly wrong that a recall election was called and Kucinich won - maintaining control of the failing city.

    One of his campaign promises was to not sell Cleveland's public electricity utility, Cleveland Public Power to Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company - a corrupt company with a stack of federal violations of anti-trust laws held against it. When Kucinich got in office, the mafia figured out that this young Mayor was actually going to keep his word and NOT sell Cleveland Public Power to Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company so the mafia put a hit out for the murder of Kucinich. Yep, Dennis Kucinich was the target of mafioso assassins, but that was nothing compared to the EXTREME pressure of the city council and local banks had placed on Kucinich to sell the utility. In the end, Kucinich still said no.

    How many times have we wished for that tenacity in our politicians when dealing with Halliburton?

    The main city creditor, Cleveland Trust, ignored all of Kucinich's debt restructuring plans and placed the city in default of payment. Here is the kicker - the bank's board had seven members who were on the payroll of Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company and they were also on that company's board. The collusion was right out of the Cheney Play Book. The bank was a major shareholder in CEI and thus the sale of the city's municipal light utility would have benefited the bank, not the citizens of Cleveland.

    And again, Kucinich stood his ground. He put the decision to the people, vote to sell to CEI or vote for a .5% tax increase. Cleveland voted for higher taxes. Corporate interests lost and remarkably, the mafia recalled the assassin.

    Cleveland never went into bankruptcy and the loan was paid and would have been paid if CEI and Cleveland Trust weren't involved in a conspiracy to rob the citizens of Cleveland of almost a third of a billion dollars, in 1970's money.

    CEI was later acquired by FirstEnergy, the company was responsible for the 2003 blackout. Cleveland Public Power is still cranking out the watts to the city of Cleveland.

    So that is the story, Kucinich is guilty of not bowing to Big Energy and ignored the deployment of assassins just to keep a campaign promise.

    Here is my question, which of the "leading candidates" in this race; Clinton, Obama or Edwards would have withstood that kind of pressure?

    Is it any wonder Ohio keeps sending Kucinich back to Congress? They know which side he is on.





    Read The Full Article:
    http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=18503


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