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Los Angeles Spanish newspaper La Opinión quoted NUHW members Regina Munoz, Veronica Gonzalez, Paul Ondo, and Lorenza Lopez in an article about a picket at Providence Little Company of Mary Medical Center San Pedro, where service, tech, and professional workers are negotiating their first union contract. The picket came after Providence engaged in regressive bargaining.
USC’s student newspaper, the Daily Trojan reported on the strike authorization vote at Keck Hospital of USC and the Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Kellie Shaner, a telemetry technician at St. Joseph Hospital and NUHW vice president, criticized Providence’s proposed closure of its Acute Rehab Unit in Humboldt County in a local news article that was picked up by MSN.com. Patients needing help recovering from strokes, surgeries, and physically debilitating accidents to be sent instead to Granada Rehabilitation and Wellness Center, a nursing home owned by Brius, which has been subject to numerous state fines. “Over the last three years, Providence has closed the birthing center at Redwood Memorial Hospital, shuttered its outpatient labs…Providence’s plan to partner with Brius, the largest and most infamous nursing home chain in California, to provide rehabilitation services in a Brius nursing home that has been fined for failing to self-report abuse, might save the company money, but it’s not in the interest of Humboldt County patients.”
ProPublica reported that although federal law requires insurers to provide the same access to mental and physical health care, mental health parity is still a work in progress. There are not enough mental health therapists to serve all the patients that need them, and those that try to work with insurance companies face a number of issues, from insurers withholding reimbursements to companies also determining who can get treatment, what kind and for how long, even asking them to reduce care when their patients were on the brink of harm, including suicide. Those issues force many therapists to leave those insurance networks, making it harder for patients to get affordable treatment.
A bill introduced in the California Legislature in February and supported by state Attorney General Rob Bonta would have given Bonta’s office wide latitude to stop or place conditions on the kinds of private equity takeovers of hospitals that the AG feared would worsen health care in the state. Six months later, Assembly Bill 3129 is still alive — and substantially weakened, reported Capital and Main. It may yet pass, and its implementation would still apply to many health care settings. But some of the industry’s biggest power players won’t be affected by it, including for-profit hospitals, because they’ve been made exempt.
NUHW Organizer Francisco Cendejas and NUHW member and USC worker Noemi Aguirre, are featured in a podcast by the Real News about the ongoing contract negotiations between 2,000 NUHW members and Keck Medicine of USC.
Former NUHW member Sarah Soroken, who is now part of NUHW’s Behavioral Health Associate Membership, was featured in a PBS SoCal story about a bill to require health plans to maintain accurate provider lists. Unfortunately, the bill did not make it out of the State Senate.
