Massachusetts Nurses Association News & Events
Statement in Response to Sen. Richard Moore Who Compares MNA to Terrorist Organization
06.25.2009
CANTON, MA – The Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) today condemned a statement made by State Senator Richard Moore (D-Uxbridge) in which he characterized the MNA, the professional association and largest union for registered nurses in the Commonwealth, as being “like the Taliban trying to take over health care in Massachusetts.” The statement was made during remarks he gave at the annual meeting of the Mass. Healthcare Quality and Cost Council, an event attended by a large audience of health care leaders and policymakers.
“We feel strongly that it is totally inappropriate to compare the state’s organization for frontline registered nurses to terrorists. The MNA has, for 100 years, been responsible for advocating for the highest standards of quality care for patients and for the advancement and protection of the nursing profession,” said Beth Piknick, MNA President. “We spend more time with patients than any other health care provider; we see more and know more than anyone else in the system about what works and doesn’t. The public knows this and trusts our views and opinions, especially when it concerns issues of patient care.”
“We do not intend to allow this insulting comment to deter us from our vigorous advocacy for our patients. Our highest priority has, and always will be, improving the quality of patient care in Massachusetts”
MNA website link http://massnurses.org/news-and…
But “has to go?” I’d need more than that.
I think it’s fair to say that we have bigger problems in the legislature right now than inappropriate hyperbole.
MNA isn’t far behind the UAW. They have tunnel vision for their own issues and everyone else can sod off. I dropped my membership in 1995.
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p>Furthering your own cause is commendable. When you screw everyone in the state in the process—-not so much.
bulb on the best of days. Ugh. And he’s from Millbury, not Uxbridge. Moore is cut from the same cloth as his mentor, Guy Glodis, imho.
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p>Just got this in my email, btw, which I immediately deleted:
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p>
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p>Perhaps people would like to get some nursing friends together and visit him in his new office?
Neverrrr mind.
STATE SENATOR
RICHARD T. MOORE
State House
Room 111
Boston, MA 02133
Telephone: (617) 722-1420
Party Affiliation – DEMOCRAT
State House E-Mail Address: Richard.Moore@state.ma.us
DISTRICT REPRESENTED: WORCESTER AND NORFOLK. – Blackstone, Douglas, Dudley, Hopedale, Mendon, Milford, Millville, Northbridge, Oxford, Southbridge, Sutton, Uxbridge and Webster, in the county of Worcester; and Bellingham, in the county of Norfolk.
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p>You may want to appologize to Senator Michael Moore if he is still speaking to you after that one. I heard 100 nurses were picketing his office an hour ago LOL!
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p>As Usual just my Opinion
And I didn’t support Moore in his election bid–Mike, that is–as he’s everything I pretty much said sans the pissing off nurses part. đŸ˜‰
You have the wrong moore
23 1/2 hours ago. Mike’s no shining beacon of light either.
It is unfortunate that even Democrats sometimes stick their foot in their mouth. From this comment Senator Moore decide one was not enough. I would at least hope he has the stomach to write an apology and even an Op ed in support of Registered Nurses. I would suggest it is the least he could do next to falling on his sword.
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p>For full disclosure my Sister is an RN and I have seen the long hours she has put in and how she carries her work home with her. It is not a career I would want by a long shot so all the more reason to respect the sacrifice of those willing to do what we are unwilling to do.
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p>Yet to compare a Massachusetts Nurse to the Taliban well if it was King George we would be stringing him up on Boston Common if it were John McCain we would suggest he was having a very senior moment. In the Senators case maybe he should reflect on the toll his position is taking on his health and decide on a long vacation. I see in the news Argentina is very nice right now especially along the coast.
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p>Shame on you Senator Moore not much meaning to the D next to your name on the ballot.
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p>As Usual just my Opinion
Was the first to propose a sales tax hike to 6%.
Saw fit to declare himself a FEMA expert on the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. He spent one year as an assistant hack to another hack.
Used a police escort to an Oxford senior citizens dinner because he was late. I was there.
Sorry folks, you don’t know Dick like we know Dick.
My wife, a nurse, attended a hearing of Sen. Moore’s health care finance committee. According to her, he came late, left early, and mostly slept while he was there.
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p>TedF
Sloppy reporting, We need a picture to confirm he was actually sleeping anyone have one?
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p>As Usual just my Opinion
I’ve attended most of the JCHCF hearings and, indeed have been to several where Senator Moore was the only elected official in attendance.
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p>The most recent was two days ago (Wednesday at 1:00 PM). Senator Moore did arrive late (but arrived before 1:15 and during the very first testimony). He did not leave early and the hearing ended around 2:45.
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p>Saying anyone “mostly slept” at a State House hearing is ridiculous. If a Chair of a Committee actually fell asleep during a hearing (even for a few seconds) it would be front page news in the Herald at least.
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p>Sloppy reporting indeed.
but was not actually sleeping
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p>seriously, now, I’ll post more later on a very serious note to demonstrate why there’s ample reason for believing that it’s time for Dick Moore to go.
Last week the AFL-CIO accused the legislature of “water-boarding” organized labor. So, Moore was just taking the legislature vs. labor metaphor to its logical extension. đŸ™‚
When their ill informed ratio bill did not pass last year, MNA’s spokesman said the legislature and hospitals were killing patients. Talk about your whack-job inflammatory rhetoric. Anytime anyone argues that mandating ratios is not the best way to deploy staff, the MNA starts yelping about about how their opponents hate nurses in general. For about a decade the incendiary fringe leadership of this union has besmirched its own name by its overblown rhetoric and its absolute allegience to a single issue — a set, mandated ratio for every caregiving facility. Other “stakeholders” are dealing with the complexities of healthcare reform; the MNA ignores all that to focus on ratios. Sure, Moore’s comment was silly and the MNA isn’t the Taliban. But an MNA activist, I mean nurse, behind a mask labeling as murderers everyone who disagrees with their poorly thought out legislation bears a striking similarity to some masked tyrant in a burkha quelling dissention in Afghanistan.
We’ve witnessed the transformation of health care in the Commonwealth over the last several decades into a risky business. Starting in the late eighties, hospital administrators began importing job reengineering consultants, leading to widespread deskilling of bedside nursing. In 1991, Chapter 495 deregulated hospital finance, thus putting the commercial health insurance industry in the driver’s seat and leading to the megamergers that so destabilized community hospitals and made life so difficult for so many patients. Then came the heavy penetration of managed care, with patients admitted sicker and discharged quicker. For-profit acute-care hospital chains for the first time found Massachusetts a fertile field to plow for profits. (Each state experienced a similar transformation, although it came more swiftly and intensely here.) Frontline nurses took note and launched a campaign to reverse this trend. Later on, the Institute of Medicine published a report in 2002 stating that 98,000 patients died unnecessarily in US hospitals each year. Around that time, Linda Aiken of the University of Pennsylvania published her findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association to the effect that, for every patient a bedside nurse cared for over four at a time, there was a seven percent increase in the mortality rate after thirty days. There have been many studies since then corroborating the fact that a lack of adequate professional nursing care, with appropriate support staff, leads to increased infections, falls and “failure to rescue” (patients being found dead and cold, too late to save). The Commonwealth of Massachusetts several years ago published a report that 2000 patients died unnecessarily each year in this state. That translates into six patients per day on average. The industry has responded with such cosmetic changes as an inaccurate web site to which patients and families are encouraged to go to find out just how great the staffing on a particular unit is. When you or a loved one is hospitalized, you need to ask how many patients you or your loved one is sharing your nurse with. Those who ridicule the struggle that organized nursing has been undertaking, right across the country, for an enforceable limit on the number of patients cared for at one time by a nurse have not been exposed to the situation. By the way, for the record, MNA strongly supported Question 5 on the 2000 ballot and the move to amend the state constitution to make access to comprehensive health insurance a right of all who dwell here. We support the real solution to the multifaceted crisis in health care, Medicare for All, HR.676. Elected and appointed officials at the federal and local level need to start paying attention to the people in the communities and not the corporate lobbyists, who buzz at least as thickly on Beacon Hill as they do on Capitol Hill. MNA has a track record of vigorously supporting such uncorrupted officials and candidates, and opposing those who have betrayed the public trust.
Welcome to BMG, Sandy.
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p>BMGers should listen to Sandy Eaton’s recent radio commentary calling for single-payer healthcare:
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p>http://www.cchange.net/tag/san…
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p>And for an op-ed I wrote last year on the Patient Safety Act, see http://www.amherstbulletin.com…
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p>Full disclosure: Sandy is a nurse and elected member of the MNA Board of Directors; I am a Community Organizer for the MNA.
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p>–Leo
Thanks for your warm welcome, and for your further development of the issue of patient safety. MNA has the influence it has because of its winning formula of member-activists and professional staff working together on behalf of the progressive agenda. We must be doing something to elicit negative reactions in some quarters while retaining the trust of the people we advocate for.
Dick Moore voted AGAINST the sales tax hike? Worried about your job Dick? You should be. I think maybe you should resign and save you and the democratic party from further embarrassment.