OAKLAND, Calif.—There’s a yawning gap between the number of U.S. nurses the viral pandemic has killed so far in the U.S. and the number of Canadian nurses killed. The count as of May 11: U.S. 91, Canada, zero.
That prompted National Nurses United President Zunei Cortez, RN, of California and her Canadian counterpart, Linda Silas, RN, to meet each other via Zoom on May 11, with hundreds of nurses from both nations listening in, to discuss why.
And it all comes down to the fact, both agreed, that Canada’s nationalized health system, despite a large hole involving nursing homes, puts people – patients and practitioners – before profits, while the U.S. is the other way around.
The hour-long discussion reinforced, though neither nurse mentioned it, NNU’s long campaign for a Canadian-style single-payer government-run health care system, Medicare For All, south of the U.S.-Canada border.
NNU has picked up support from more than a dozen other U.S. unions, along with a majority of the House Democratic Caucus, led by Progressive Caucus Co-Chair Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and 17 senators, led by Bernie Sanders, Ind-Vt.
Sanders made Medicare For All his top plank in his now-suspended Democratic presidential nomination campaign, repeatedly and delightfully telling all comers, “I wrote the damn bill!” And NNU was the first AFL-CIO union to endorse him.
By contrast, Canada’s national health care system, built...
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