The proposed budget language to suspend the nurse-to-patient ratios for every patient on every unit in the acute care hospitals for the entire period that nurses are away from their patient assignment for meal and rest breaks undermines patient safety in every hospital setting.

Registered nurses from nearly a dozen hospitals in California walked out on the job, grabbed picket signs and held a one-day strike Wednesday to protest massive cuts to patient care and RN livelihood. Many marched outside Sutter Health hospitals in the Bay Area where the corporation is proposing some 100 widespread reductions in patient services and RN contract standards.

With great fanfare this week, the Washington Post reports that United Healthcare plans to keep key consumer provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act no matter what the Supreme Court rules about the individual insurance purchase mandate. It sounds so, well, friendly and reasonable, doesn’t it? But read it again and then I want to tell you what that really says to America’s patients and to United Healthcare’s policyholders.