Evening Open Thread: Healthcare Struggles in California

[SeminalBlog]

The issue of health care comes to a head in California this week with two issues being raised by the California Nurses Association.
The first is regarding the denying of treatment to cancer patients:

The latest in a series of patients not taking it anymore will be tomorrow in Orange County, LA. We expect friends and family of Nick Colombo, and local nurses, and healthcare activists to muster at least 100 or 200 people to occupy the offices of PacifCare–enough that the insurer will have to take notice.
Colombo is a 17-year-old cancer patient denied a treatment–said to cost either $30,000 or $100,000–by PacifiCare, which was just fined $3.5 million for wrongly denying the claims of 133,000 people. (You know an insurance company is bad when a Republican Insurance commissioner fines them.)

nycene is following this story in detail over at DailyKos.
Secondly, starting last Friday, the California Nurses Association has announced a 10-day strike of 8 hospitals operated by Sutter Health in the Bay Area. Some 4,000 RNs are protesting problems with "patient care, medical redlining, and healthcare for nurses."
This isn't the first strike against Sutter Health: earlier last year nurses struck to enforce compliance with California's nurse-to-patient ratios, which aids in nurses' ability to adequately provide quality care for a smaller number of patients, instead of providing minimal care for a larger number of patients.
Not only are patients suffering in the American health care system, but so are nurses and laborers working in health care. Head over to nycene's diary to see how you can help, and continue to discuss the relation of labor rights to health care and patient rights.
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