Glenn Beck probably under care of SEIU nurses
November 05, 2009 8:19 pm ET by Oliver Willis
From Alternet:
Earlier today, a hospitalized Glenn Beck tweeted in praise of the "AMAZING drs/nurses" who have cared for him since the emergency removal of his inflamed appendix yesterday afternoon.
The quality of care he is receiving should not have come as a surprise. When Beck complained of acute abdominal pain during his radio program on Wednesday, he was rushed to a nearby hospital. The security-conscious Beck has not disclosed the name of the facility, but it's a safe bet that it is staffed by proud members of a storied union: New York's Local 1199, aka United Healthcare Workers East, which belongs to the Service Employees International Union. The SEIU has organized all of Manhattan's major hospitals, including every facility to which Beck could have conceivably been sent....
While he's lying on his back, Beck should take advantage of his illness to begin his self-education. He might ask his "amazing" nurses what they think about their wages and benefits, which are some of the best in the country. He should ask them to talk about the relationship between those wages and their yellow and purple union cards. He might learn that they enjoy some of the highest standards for healthcare jobs in the country, not because of the "free market," but because generations of 1199 members fought for them.
The quality of care Beck is receiving is directly connected to the proud history of New York's Local 1199. To pick just one study out of many, research by the U.S. National Institutes of Health shows that heart attack victims sent to unionized hospitals enjoy higher survival rates over those sent to non-unionized hospitals by between seven and 11 percent.
As Media Matters has repeatedly documented, Glenn Beck has waged an almost non-stop smear campaign versus SEIU over the last year.
Palin's book and Obama's bow: a media week to forget
Media Matters: The Palin chronicles
The Friday Rush: A series of conflicts
----------------------------
The Midnight Review
Mum Is The Word
~
Second, the research cited in the fourth paragraph assumes that the heart attack survival rate has more to do with the healthcare 'workers' than the DOCTORS. Lets be serious
Third, the implication that unions are responsible for the standards union health care workers enjoy ignores the fact that we are an aging society with more demand for healthcare workers than supply, and thus we have to import that labor from canada and europe, pay higher wages and increase the standards to attract workers to individual healthcare facilities, pay to house and relocate them, etc. It's an employee's market right now. The conclusions drawn above are unfounded and unclear at best.
2. Nurses usually spend more time with their patients than doctors, are responsible for ensuring that the prescribed care regime is properly followed, and alert doctors when patients need attention.
3. Longer lifespans go hand in hand with more healthy years. More healthy years lead to decreased demand for healthcare services. Longer life spans decrease average individuals' annual health care demand and costs.
you're an idiot if you think nurses have nothing to do with quality of care
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Nice try though.
If it were not for the union, their wages would be lower, and their working conditions would not be as good. That would, in turn, lead to fewer nurses, which would, in turn, negatively impact the quality of care. Thus: UNIONS HELP.
------------------------------------------------------------
It's a fairly strait line, assuming you don't start out with the "all unions are bad" assumption/mentality.