Oral Testimony of Jean Ross, RN
Before the Subcommittee on Health of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, December 10, 2019 — Hearing on “Proposals to Achieve Universal Health Care Coverage”
Good morning and thank you, Chairwoman Eshoo, Ranking Member Burgess, and members of the subcommittee for inviting me to testify today. My name is Jean Ross. I have been a registered nurse in Minnesota for 45 years, and I am President of National Nurses United, the largest union representing bedside nurses in the United States, with over 150,000 members.
In my testimony today, I want to illustrate two main points:
First, our current patchwork system of public programs and private for-profit insurers is ineffective, inefficient, and financially unsustainable.
Second, the only way we can guarantee every person living in this country receives the health care they need is by adopting a single payer, Medicare for All system.
Every day, nurses witness the failures of our current health system. I’ve watched as patients don’t seek the care they need because they can’t afford their copays or deductibles or don’t have insurance. I’ve watched as insurers refuse to cover the care that my patients need.
Over many years, I cared for countless patients who showed up in the ER with severe illnesses only because they could not afford preventive care. One patient always stands out to me. He arrived in the ER in a hypertensive crisis. We treated him for an imminent stroke. I learned he was rationing his blood pressure medication. Instead of taking it every day as prescribed, he was taking it every two days. He knew he needed to take those pills daily, but he could not afford the medication, even with his private insurance plan.
As a nurse, I have many stories like this, but I am also a mother and a grandmother, and this broken system has affected my family too.
My son Tony suffers from a leaky heart valve. For the past fifteen years, he has been consistently unable to afford the cardiology care he needs. So, he just doesn’t see his cardiologist. As a nurse, I know that his leaky valve could lead to heart failure. As his mother, I live with the constant fear that this could happen to my son because the health system I work in is failing him.
My daughter is a single parent, and she has struggled to afford the copays for my grandchildren’s care. When my grandson Evan was an infant, my daughter called me because he was sick, and she wanted my advice as a nurse. She didn’t have the money to take him to the doctor. I told her I would pay the copay, because I knew that Evan needed immediate medical attention. Indeed, he was suffering from Encephalitis, an inflammation in the brain, which can cause permanent brain damage and even death. I am so grateful that I had the economic resources to help, because if I had not, like so many other patients who don’t have the means, Evan would have been in severe trouble.
As a grandmother, I want to leave my grandchildren with a country where health care is a right. Where they know when they or their children get sick, they will only have to worry about their health, and not the cost.
As a nurse for 45 years, I know that these stories are not unique.
Thirty million people have no health insurance and an additional 44 million people are under-insured.
Yet the U.S. spends more money on health care per capita than any other nation in the world. But despite paying top dollar for our health care, we get poor results. Our country ranks poorly on many international health indicators, including average life expectancy, infant and maternal mortality, and death from preventable diseases. High costs and poor health outcomes persist because access to insurance is not the same as guaranteed health care for all.
This brings me to my second point. Single-payer Medicare for All is the only way that we can guarantee health care while also reducing the amount of money we spend on health care overall.
Under Medicare for All, we will transform our profit-driven health insurance system into a health care system that prioritizes patient care. Everyone will receive quality, comprehensive, therapeutic care without any financial barriers. With Medicare for All, doctors and nurses will be able to provide care based on our professional judgment without insurance company interference. We’ll have better patient outcomes and we’ll save money too.
As you consider different options to improve our health system, I encourage you to consider the following questions:
Will this proposal guarantee safe, therapeutic health care to every person in this country regardless of their ability to pay?
Will it allow people to get health care independent of where they work or if they have a job?
Will it reduce administrative complexity and waste in this system, and control costs?
There is only one bill before the subcommittee today that will achieve all of these things: H.R. 1384, the Medicare for All Act of 2019, authored by Congresswomen Jayapal and Dingell.
The primary responsibility of a registered nurse is to protect the health and wellbeing of her patients. In my professional judgment, the only way we can put our patients first — as we are ethically and morally bound to do — is through Medicare for All. I urge every Member of Congress to support H.R. 1384.
