Caring for All New Yorkers
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OCTOBER 2013 New York the official publicationnurse of the new york state nurses association NYSNA Caring for all New Yorkers SPECIAL CONVENTION issUE Looking back at a year of key firsts. Looking forward to our plan to win safe staffing and fair contracts. RNs at the West Indian Day Parade (above). A first-hand look at our fight to keep hospitals open. Page 4. Upstate nurses are coming together to join us and build NYSNA power (right). Page 9. 2 NEW YORK NURSE OCTOBER 2013 NS’ Y NA S EXTRAORDINARY yeaR Taking stock By Patricia DiLillo, RN, NYSNA President We brought our fight for healthcare to the ’m writing this shortly before the NYSNA convention, which will public this year – and we built a growing Iconclude with our newly elected movement for healthcare for all. board taking office. We’ve had a remarkable year. Literally thou- sands of NYSNA members stepped up and got involved in the fight for for-profit hospitals into New York. process, won a moratorium on safe staffing and quality healthcare And, in another first, we made an hospital closings statewide. We for all New Yorkers. endorsement for New York City won a lot of support in Albany for Nurses are tough. We stare suf- mayor during the primary and a safe staffing law. We stopped fering in the face every day, and helped make healthcare a key issue a proposed law that would have we don’t flinch. We just keep our in the race. let for-profits operate hospitals in professional promise and deliver New York and another that would compassionate, expert care, day in, Advocating for healthcare have weakened the Certificate of day out. Nursing isn’t just about bedside Need process, a tool we count on to We have brought that same care. It’s about advocacy. We can’t speak out when hospital adminis- toughness to reforming our union. give our patients the care they trators propose service changes that Together, we have made NYSNA deserve if we’re stretched too thin will hurt the communities we serve. democratic. Every member now has and our hospitals are cutting ser- a voice. vices, and even closing. And that Building a movement means participating as a union in Our fight is far from over. Taking new steps politics. Together, we can descend Hospital closings will be a threat We also have made NYSNA in numbers on City Hall, Albany again. Wall Street interests will be Advocating for patients. Advancing the profession.SM sharper. We brought our fight for and any hospital where elected back. We must turn support for healthcare to the public, marching officials or administrators need safe staffing into enough votes to BO ARD OF DiRecTORS in the streets for safe staffing and reminding how much healthcare pass a law. But we’ve made a lot President protesting time and again across matters. Together, we can push for of progress – and we’re building Patricia DiLillo, RN, MEd New York City and the state to stop laws and budgets that reflect the a movement that’s tough enough First Vice President service cuts and hospital closings. needs of our communities. to win. Judy Sheridan-Gonzalez, RN, MSN, FNP For the first time ever, we took a That’s what we’re doing. And It has been my great honor to Second Vice President Marva Wade, RN strong stand in the halls of political we’re seeing results. stand with you. This is my last Secretary power. Busloads of nurses trav- We stopped Long Island College column as president, but I’m most Anne Bové, RN, MSN, BC, CCRN, ANP eled to Albany to lobby for a safe Hospital and Interfaith Medical certainly still in the fight with you. Treasurer Patricia Kane, RN staffing law and against allowing Center from closing – and, in the Together, we’ll prevail. Directors at Large Anthony Ciampa, RN Ingred Denny-Boyce, RN, BSN, MSN Shirley Hunter, RN, MS Tracey Kavanagh, RN, BSN Colleen B. Murphy, RN, MS Grace Otto, RN, BA, BSN Sean Petty, RN, CPEN Karine M. Raymond, RN, MSN Veronica Richardson, RN Verginia Stewart, RN Regional Directors Southeastern Michael Healy, RN Western Gaen Hooley, RN, BS Southern Gwen Lancaster, RN Central Carol Ann Lemon, RN Lower Hudson/NJ Eileen Letzeiser, RN, BSN, MPH Eastern Martha Wilcox, RN Executive Editor Jill Furillo, RN, BSN, PHN Executive Director Editorial offices located at: 131 W 33rd. St., New York, NY 10001 Phone: 212-785-0157 x 159 Email: [email protected] Website: www.nysna.org Subscription rate: $33 per year ISSN (Print) 1934-7588/ISSN (Online) 1934-7596 ©2013, All rights reserved NYSNA nurses are taking to the streets and the halls of power to defend public hospitals and to win safe staffing. CORPORATE ATTACK NEW YORK NURSE 3 OCTOBER 2013 HOARDERS beWARE The U.S. can afford healthcare for all Census Bureau. New York City is Time magazine reported that now dubbed the “Inequality Capital hospital equipment manufacturers, of America,” says Huffington Post. suppliers, and drug makers rou- Mayor Bloomberg leaves office with tinely gouge the healthcare system, By Jill personal wealth of $27 billion, New with charges in many multiples of Furillo, RN, Yorker magazine reported, much of those in other industrial countries. The preamble of the NYSNA it derived from providing financial “If we paid what other countries U.S. Constitution talks Executive information services to Wall Street. did for the same prescription drugs, “ Director Those are the “financial engineers” we would save about $94 billion about promoting the we bailed out with tax dollars five a year,” said Time. No wonder general welfare of hen you look beyond the years ago, but from whom a promised healthcare companies are ablaze homeless, among them recovery in the vast majority of our on Wall Street, where their merg- the people. It’s time W20,000 children in New communities has yet to materialize. ers and acquisitions mount. For the “We the People” York City alone, beyond the hard- hoarders, healthcare is just another ship of elderly women from whom Corporate aid source of cash. started enforcing our $75 in monthly food stamps – a The lowest corporate taxes in two As we know, hospital CEOs get constitutional rights. week’s groceries – was “seques- generations plays an important part their share. At Montefiore and There is plenty of tered” away this year, and look in corporate cash hoarding. The Presbyterian, CEOs pocket more past smoldering forests where fire- average effective tax rate for U.S. cor- than $4 million a year each, with money to meet the fighters died, their ranks depleted porations was 12.1 percent in 2011 other executives in our hospitals human right to quality by layoffs from blistering budget (the latest available figure), bringing taking home more than $1 million cuts, what you see are piles of cash. the rate to a 40-year low. Since 2009, a year. healthcare.” U.S. corporations, excluding the when Wall Street paid itself $140 bil- Pressures continue to mount to – NYSNA President-elect banks, have a staggering $2 trillion lion in bonuses with our tax dollars, raise revenue at our hospitals, to do Judy Sheridan-Gonzalez, RN in cash, according to the Federal 10,000 public employees have been our share for corporate hoarding. Reserve, a historic high. And when laid off each month, mass public lay- For patients, the price is quality of you add worldwide holdings, the offs that continue today. care. That’s not a price we can pay. figure more than doubles, says the Hospitals have a role in this his- We held the line in Brooklyn and IRS. A “$5 Trillion Stash,” headlined toric cash hoarding, with hospital we will continue to hold the line The Atlantic magazine. This historic corporations and nonprofits alike wherever we are unified and ready hoarding, the sidelining of capital operating as profit centers. to act. Let the hoarders beware. essential to rebuilding a productive economy, is a national disgrace. To put it in perspective, our total annual national healthcare expenditure is $2.7 trillion. Do the math. America’s richest sharehold- ers – the 1 percent – have set aside a sum equal to almost two years of healthcare. In just one year, 2012, 80 million Americans did not make a recommended doctor visit or fill a prescription because they could not afford it, a Commonwealth Fund survey found. This economy, a jug- gernaut of inequality, is doing us in. Greed run amok The hoarders are insatiable. Income of the 1 percent rose 31 percent between 2009 and 2012, while the income of the bot- tom 40 percent fell 6 percent. New York stands out in this dia- bolical undoing. Income inequality is greater in New York State and NYSNA President-elect Judy Sheridan-Gonzalez, RN (third from right), Treasurer in the New York City region than Pat Kane, RN (second from right), and fellow members rallied before the U.N. in in any other state or metropolitan September, calling for a small tax on Wall Street transactions, called the Robin Hood area in the country, according to the Tax, to fund social needs like healthcare and public education. OUR 4 NEW YORK NURSE FIGHTBACK OCTOBER 2013 How we saved our hospital By Julie Semente, RN, Secretary, LICH Executive Committee ast January, I opened the morning newspaper and L found out that SUNY NS Y NA’s planned to close LICH, the hospi- fight to save tal where I’ve helped save lives for 30 years. I knew what the fight to Julie Semente, RN (left), with fellow leaders in the fight to save Long Island LICH led to save LICH’s life would take and College Hospital: Loreto Gasmen, RN, Joan Rowley, RN, and Herdley Hill, RN.