A battle is raging over a small Bay Area hospital, pitting not-for-profit medical powerhouse Sutter Health against a small community. Sutter plans to close San Leandro Hospital, which serves the small community south of Oakland and its large portion of Medicare patients. The company says it can't justify subsidizing the facility which it says loses money each year while rebuilding its larger sister hospital, Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley, to comply with seismic requirements.

Another contingent of National Nurses United (NNU) nurse volunteers is on its way to Haiti to help provide much needed medical care to the earthquake survivors. The 10 RNs are part of NNU’s RN Response Network (RNRN).

As much as we would like to join the celebration of the House's passage of the health bill last night, in good conscience we cannot. We take no comfort in seeing aspirin dispensed for the treatment of cancer. Instead of eliminating the root of the problem - the profit-driven, private health insurance industry - this costly new legislation will enrich and further entrench these firms. The bill would require millions of Americans to buy private insurers' defective products, and turn over to them vast amounts of public money.

Two weeks off Haiti aboard a Navy hospital ship left Darrell Daugherty, a nurse from Chico, with vivid memories and plenty of material for his diary. It was the chance of a lifetime to work aboard the USNS Comfort, Daugherty said in an interview this week. "I met great people. I thought they were doing a very good job."