On Saturday, July 19th at 1pm EDT, Healthcare United members from across the country joined in our first-ever national conference call. The call featured several healthcare workers from key states, including our resident blogger Madeleine Mysko, RN who was attending the BlogHer conference in California, and Mike Kingsbury, RN, a dedicated nurse activist from Denver, Colorado.


Of the many results from the poll, one trend is clear: that nurses and healthcare workers are deeply dissatisfied with the current state of patient care in the U.S. Roughly 65% of the caregivers we talked to are dissatisfied with our healthcare system, and 37% are displeased with their own health care coverage.

Overall, a majority feel strongly that we should be addressing the following themes/issues:

• Putting patients' needs ahead of insurance and drug companies
• Ensuring healthcare workers have adequate staffing and resources
• Ensuring that healthcare funding goes to patient care, not insurance companies

We also asked caregivers to respond to both candidate's healthcare reform proposals, using the language provided on their own websites. Obama's proposal, which is available here, drew substantially more support from healthcare workers than did McCain's, available here. And it gets even more interesting--in most cases, when participants were read the policy positions and past voting record of Barack Obama, support for the candidate more than doubled.

At the very least, these poll results should inspire all candidates running for office--whether it be local, state or federal office-to reach out to us as healthcare workers (and as voters!), and to engage in a meaningful dialogue with us on the issue of healthcare reform.

Comments

There are no comments for this entry yet. Get the discussion started and post below.

Post a comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Not a member yet? Registration is easy and takes just a minute.

Can’t remember your password? Have a password reminder emailed to you.