The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee and our allies at the Leadership Conference on Guaranteed Healthcare are debuting a new feature: The Healthcare Heroes Caucus, which will honor candidates who are running on a platform of supporting HR 676, John Conyers' bill for an expanded and improved Medicare for All.

We will highlight the stories of these healthcare heroes, and work to get them the attention and support they need.  It's not always easy to run in the face of insurance companies and a sold-out political culture...but it is smart.  Poll after poll shows the American people are open to an expanded and improved Medicare for All, and are desperate for the kind of solutions that will improve care while saving money.

Debbie Cook is our first Healthcare Hero candidate and she's a great one.  She is a committed progressive running in CA-46, an Orange County California district that is ready to toss out libertarian radical Dana Rohrbacher and elect a real leader.

Well I guess the healthcare apolcalypse is upon us:

Infomercial king Billy Mays, known for screaming about the wonders of cleaning solutions Kaboom!, OxiClean, and other household products, is now starring in a commercial for what he calls "the most important product I've ever endorsed:" health insurance.

That's right.  The man who brought you the Bloomin' Onion Maker and the Samurai Shark is now selling health insurance.

In today's roundup from the movement for guaranteed healthcare, Progressive Democrats of America lead the charge to put real healthcare reform in the Democratic platform, a Hawaii activist reports on single-payer organizing at Obama platform meetings, a Massachusetts RN warns that the healthcare mess in their state was created when "moderates" cut a deal to protect insurance profits, and Senatorial candidate Jeff Merkley endorses HR 676...though he also endorses the terrible Wyden bill, from his future fellow Oregon Senator.

Oh and health insurers keep laughing to the bank, with Aetna reporting another few hundred million in profit.  

It's all below!   Brought to you by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee and the Guaranteed Healthcare Blog.

This is one of those updates on the movement for guaranteed healthcare that is difficult to write, both in terms of the gravity of the situation, and the need for Washington to act accordingly.

The numbers are staggering, and barely made it into the US media: 101,000 Americans died preventable deaths last year due to our insurance industry-dominated health care system, according to a new study by the respected Commonwealth Fund.

That is shocking, lobbyist-induced genocide.

The good news is that, despite the best efforts of the insurance industry and their Washington allies, the movement towards guaranteeing healthcare on a Medicare for All or "single-payer" model is clearly strengthening.  The latest advocates?  Doctors, who just this decade have joined nurse, in solidly supporting Universal Medicare, a fact which will fundamentally alter healthcare politics.  

Maybe I'm seeing things too optimistic, but stepping back from the details of the healthcare reform movement, and looking at the big national trends, there is reason to hope that the movement in California for guaranteed healthcare will lead the nation along a path to progress.

Obviously in many ways the situation is different...labor unions are stronger in California than they are nationally, (and led the way in defeating the insurance industry-backed fake healthcare reform bill offered last year by Arnold Schwarzenneger and former Speaker Fabian Nunez), and the healthcare grassroots might be more developed as well.

But the underlying economics are the same...workers, families, employers and the state budget alike are all being crushed by out-of-control costs for insurance premiums, deductibles, and co-pays, all for a service that places us last in the industrialized world, and to subsidize a health insurance industry that plays no role in the delivery of patient care.

So let's just take a look at the evidence that suggests California is leading the nation:

This year's extended primary just might be great for healthcare reform as the Clinton campaign's failure may have killed off the terrible idea of insurance mandates.  She ran on it, and lost---just like Arnold did in California last year.

If so, great news all around.  Working people, already struggling, will not face the prospects of having their wages garnished to pay off Blue Cross' inflated premiums, overhead, and denials.  Healthcare reformers can focus their work towards enacting genuine solutions, rather than fighting off this insurance marketing scheme masquerading as health care policy.  And all of us can debate the real issues at hand here, like the new report finding the number of underinsured is spiking as our healthcare system continues its death-by-insurer spiral.

We'll take a look at this and updates from single-payer movement below!

In an extraordinary convention just concluding in Puerto Rico, here's what you didn't hear from Andy Stern's paid PR blitz.  SEIU was under siege throughout by protest encampments of the popular Puerto Rican Teachers' Union, responding to SEIU's raid of the island's largest  union-- during a strike to improve horrific educational conditions.  

Inside the convention, to the detriment of the overall labor movement,  Stern successfully squashed  the internal dissent by SEIU's democracy activists, thereby further concentrating power in himself.  The CEO model.

And in an extraordinary development, Stern announced that  SEIU is basically doing away with labor reps in favor of outsourced call centers...which makes sense, in that if you sign no-strike promises to your employer, why would you need to mobilize your members?  

There's more!  SEIU is continuing its war against state and national RN unions by now picking up John McCain's frame of attacking "government-run healthcare" as their latest salvo against the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (AFL-CIO).  If anyone doubted SEIU's willingness to sell out genuine healthcare reform in a second, there it is.

Details below...

Attendees of the SEIU Convention in Puerto Rico are facing a protest encampment and multiple pickets by Puerto Rican teachers, parents and schoolchildren, furious at Andy Stern and his  North American union for their efforts to bust a historic strike and take over the independent Puerto Rican Teachers Union (FMPR--Fdederacion de Maestros de Puerto Rico).  

Labor Notes is on the scene:

 The Puerto Rican convention center hosting the Service Employees International Union's big confab is kind of an eerie cross between Superman's Fortress of Solitude and a prison in some isolated part of rural California. The entire complex was fenced in or gated off, with police and security guards posted at every entrance.  Apparently the looming threat is the Puerto Rican teachers, whose union is known by its Spanish acronym FMPR. About 100 teachers gathered outside the convention center Saturday morning to protest SEIU's raid on their union (read the full story from the February Labor Notes). In January the FMPR was decertified by the Puerto Rican government for authorizing a strike. The decertification coincided with SEIU's announcement that they were affiliating a rival teacher union and making plans to scoop up Puerto Rico's 40,000 teachers.