Nurses Feel The Bern

National Nurses United, the largest nurse's union, has endorsed Bernie Sanders for President. Glancing at the headline, it seems like a dog-bites-man story: a socialist candidate is endorsed by a socialist organization. But there is a little more there worth exploring.

I always considered nursing an indispensable service. Someone who enters the profession must demonstrate the highest level of compassion and duty to caring for sick and injured people. One side benefit to being a nurse is probably job portability. If you are any good, you can have your pick of desirable job situations, like being a staff nurse at a clinic in Malibu, or in Hilo. The freedom of movement within the profession should help to offset what must be a very challenging job.

The rank and file nurses may feel this way, but their leadership doesn't. They are like any other union. They spout platitudes about nurse-to-patient ratios, as if this shows how committed they are to patient care. But its like the teacher's union and teacher-to-student ratios: a way to force a high level of staffing, a jobs program.

The reason for the nurse's union endorsement is given a quick soundbite on the news: Bernie Sanders is in favor of single-payer healthcare. "RNs agree," their union's website claims, on "real reform: an improved, expanded Medicare for all."

"Medicare for all." That's funny, because many doctors limit their Medicare patients, or are ending acceptance of Medicare. The reimbursement rate is just too low. If the government were the single payer, many talented people would never become doctors. How then, can it be called "Medicare for all?"

Same goes for nurses. The only way the government can run healthcare is to ration care and force down reimbursements. The pricing signals that the free market sends to providers never get sent. A government that can set reimbursement schedules would also attempt to allocate nursing resources. Forget about a quiet practice in the Catskills, and say hello to chronic long-term care in Baltimore.

The rest of the nurse's union manifesto for Sanders is a real mess. NNU backs a "Robin Hood Tax bill, S. 1731" that imposes "a 0.5 percent tax on stock market" transactions, because this money could be used to pay for "pay for healthcare for all." The union's pension fund would probably be exempt from this tax, and the money wouldn't pay for healthcare, it would go into the general fund, like Medicare and Social Security deductions.

The nurse's union also admires Sanders' opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. NNU's wish list reads more like the demands of Occupy Wall Street. It's marxist dialectic all the way down, especially number 2, which urges on the current pathological social movements.

Sanders's socialist goals include, according to NNU, "living wages, for fighting income inequality, for educational opportunity, for environmental justice and action on the climate crisis, for civil rights, voting rights, and ending the systemic racism in policing and the criminal justice system."

Remember, socialism isn't some kind of communism lite. It is communism. The nurse's union is openly siding with someone who will take away property rights from people that earned them, and redistribute them by force to people who didn't.