God Bless Nurses. And Please Hurry!

Every religion prioritizes care for the needy. Christianity’s Benedictine Rule, for example, puts care of the sick atop the moral order, “above and before every other duty.” Really – even above the holy Wall Street mandate that medical and insurance conglomerates must squeeze every last penny of profits out of America’s corporate-care system? Well, gosh, they say, let’s not go crazy with this religious stuff! There’s morality… and then there’s business. Consider how today’s monopolized and financialized hospital networks treat nurses – the high-touch frontline people who do the most to put care in “healthcare.” Paid a pittance, thousands of nurses across America are now organizing and unionizing against the inequities of this system. The nurses core grievance, however, is not their pay, but the gross understaffing imposed on them and their patients by profiteering hospital chains. In a national survey, more than half of nurses feel “used up” and “emotionally drained.” Why? Primarily because executives keep goosing up profits by eliminating care providers, making it impossible for the remaining, stretched-out staff to meet their own high moral standard of care. That’s demoralizing for nurses… and deadly for patients. Yet, corporate-care lobbyists loudly squawk that hospital chains can’t afford to pay fair wages and fully staff-up. Ironically, one of the loudest squawkers is the hospital mega-chain, Ascension, a Catholic church offshoot proclaiming to be “rooted in the loving ministry of Jesus as healer.” Some healer. In a devilish partnership with a Wall Street huckster, Ascension has been slashing nursing staffs while paying its CEO $13 million a year, hoarding $18 billion in cash, and allotting a pitiful two percent of its budget for charitable care of the poor. What the hell! To help battle health care greed, go to NationalNursesUnited.org.Photo courtesy National Nurses— Austin nurses locked out after a strike.Leave a commentShareJim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.