Following a decision last Tuesday by the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors to table a sales tax to, in part, help embattled Doctors Medical Center in San Pablo, DMC registered nurses today announced plans to hold a picket today to demand the county assume operation of DMC with existing revenues and retain it as a full service hospital. Anything less than a full service hospital would abandon residents of West Contra Costa County and expose hundreds of thousands of area residents to the threat of no emergency and hospital care in their community, RNs said.

Registered nurses, consumers, community health activists, and patients will rally in Sacramento Wednesday, then attend a legislative hearing in which they will call on state lawmakers to support Proposition 45 on the November ballot to provide effective curbs on insurance premium increases.

Leaders of the Michigan Nurses Association, Michigan’s largest union and professional association for registered nurses, have issued their second of two rounds of endorsements in state House and Senate races.

The Supreme Court ruling today limiting the collective voice of Illinois home care workers continues a dangerous pattern of undermining democracy as well as eroding the rights of workers to have a collective voice through their unions, and signals a desire for broader restrictions, said National Nurses United, the largest U.S. organization of nurses. NNU also blasted a second court ruling sharply limiting access to reproductive healthcare for women by allowing corporations to refuse to provide contraceptive care in health coverage.

Two major bills sponsored by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United that would greatly expand patient access to doctors and hospitals of their choice and hold non-profit hospitals to public accountability on what charity care and community benefits they provide passed key tests in the California legislature Wednesday.