Sandy Eaton defines dysfunctional, as in Massachusetts health care, on June 30, 2014. ... WCCATV

A thorough look at how the Affordable Care Act will change health care beyond just the consumer interaction. A useful resource for health care consumers, health care workers and reform activists. Greg Chern, Against The Current, May/June 2014 ... Lean

Ellen Kagan and Sandy Eaton, RN discuss the Patient Safety Act, to protect you when you are a patient in a Massachusetts hospital. The only state to have a safe staffing law like this is California and it is working wonderfully for the people who live there. It is necessary to your good health! ... Your

A discussion of the Hospital Profit Transparency & Fairness Act between host Ellen Kagan and Sandy Eaton, RN. Also, Ellen discusses her billing issues at a noted Harvard teaching hospital. ... Your

Highlights in a century of popular efforts to achieve a national system of health care in the United States. Anne-Emanuelle Birn, Theodore M. Brown, Elizabeth Fee & Walter J. Lear, American Journal of Public Health, January 2003. Some key moments stand out in a century of popular efforts to achieve a national system of health care in the United States. These efforts began with the Socialist Party’s endorsement of accident, unemployment, sickness and old age insurance at its founding convention in 1901, an endorsement that was included in the Socialist Party presidential platform in 1904, 1908 and 1912. ... Struggles

Hold the Date! LCSP National Strategy Conference August 22-24

How did America end up with this health care system? Bill Toland, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 27, 2014 Pennsylvania in the late 1800s and early 1900s was an unsafe place to work, with a quarter-million recorded industrial calamities a year. So dangerous were the trades, and so gruesome were the accidents, that the chronicling of injuries suffered by workers became its own muckraking genre. A short-lived publication of the Inter­national Association of Factory Inspectors got some its best stories from the steel industry ... How

How Many Die From Medical Mistakes in US Hospitals?
An updated estimate says at least 210,000 patients die from medical mistakes in US hospitals a year.
Marshall Allen, ProPublica, September 19, 2013

It seems that every time researchers estimate how often a medical mistake contributes to a hospital patient’s death, the numbers come out worse.

Ten Theses on Health Care
Sandy Eaton, RN, January 2010 (revised 2014)

Contradictions in US Health Care: Syllabus
Sandy Eaton, RN, Center for Marxist Education, 2014

Session 1. April 14, 2014: Health Care USA: Social Good versus Corporate Wealth

The failings of the Affordable Care Act are rooted in a long shift away from the idea of a truly universal health care. AW Gaffney, Jacobin, April 15, 2014 Last year’s three-ring Congressional shutdown circus - for many little more than a desperate rearguard action by an isolated rightwing fringe to undo the fait accompli of Barack Obama’s health care reform - reinforced with each passing day the gaudy dysfunction of the American political system. ... Neoliberal

The Labor Campaign for Single Payer Briefing Paper, 10 Things Unions Need to Look Out for When Bargaining Under Obamacare, has just been released. The paper examines ten threats to union-negotiated health benefits under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). It elaborates on the concerns expressed in Resolution 54 passed at this year's AFL-CIO Convention. ... Watch Out

Resolution 54: AFL-CIO Convention Resolution on the Affordable Care Act
Submitted by the Building and Construction Trades Department, the International Union of Operating Engineers and the American Federation of Teachers ...
WHEREAS, in 2009, the AFL-CIO Convention passed two health care resolutions - Health Care Reform Now and the Social Insurance Model for Health Care Reform - which reaffirmed the labor movement’s commitment to health care for all, ultimately through a single-payer system. In 2010, Congress passed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) ... Resolution 54

Nurses File Ballot Initiative for Safe Patient Limits
Sandy Eaton, RN, Labor Notes, September 2013

Up to 98,000 patients die unnecessarily in US hospitals annually, including 2,000 in Massachusetts. Bay State nurses have launched a campaign to end this travesty once and for all through a November 2014 statewide ballot question that would put safe limits on nurses’ patient assignments.

Falls, infections, medical and surgical errors - all result from the transformation of health care into an assembly line. Dozens of scientific studies published in the last decade have shown how many preventable deaths are attributable to one simple fact: patients are forced to share their nurse with too many other patients at one time.

DeMoro Only Advocate for Nurses, Labor on National List. National Nurses United, August 27, 2012 National Nurses United Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro has won national recognition once again as one of the “100 Most Influential People in Healthcare” – the only advocate for nurses or other working people on a list published annually by Modern Healthcare, a prominent national healthcare industry publication. ... NNU