Nurses Launch Major Ohio Radio Ad Campaign Telling Candidates: Stop Selling Insurance and Back R...( Activist Nurses Union to Run Ads...),Health

Activist Nurses Union to Run Ads in Heavy Rotation Through Primary

OAKLAND, Calif., Feb. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- On the eve of Ohio's crucial primary vote Tuesday, the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association today launched a major radio campaign across Ohio with an emphatic message to the presidential candidates to stop selling private insurance policies and support real healthcare reform.

The 60-second radio ad is running in markets across the state, including Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Lima, Toledo, and Youngstown.

Criticizing "individual mandates" that require people to purchase insurance -- a major focus of the debate on healthcare among the Democratic presidential candidates -- the nurses say that mandating private insurance is not "universal healthcare," especially while the insurance giants "can still charge as much as they want and still deny you care when you are sick."

The role of government, the nurses' ad says, should be to "protect us from insurance companies, not force us to buy insurance products."

Nurses know the problem with insurance-based care, the ad notes. They regularly "witness lives lost, care denied, families ruined by big insurance corporations. Nurses know there is only one real cure for our broken health care system. We ask the candidates to commit to the highest standard of quality care through Medicare for all Americans. That's the real reform that puts decision-making power where it belongs -- with you, your nurses, and your doctors."

A challenge to the candidates to support real reform

"Nurses see America's healthcare crisis up close everyday," said Michelle Mahon, a Cleveland area RN. "Our ability to provide safe, effective, therapeutic care is undermined and our professional responsibility as patient advocates is compromised by insurance companies. Ohio nurses believe that the answer to our healthcare crisis is a Medicare for
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