Still shot, Democracy, Now!
In April, workers at Harlem Hospital held a protest over hospital policy: using the same mask for five 12-hour shifts (60 hours); no sick leave and told to work with virus symptoms and no testing. Nurses worry they are trying to help heal people but could be doing the exact opposite. . . Below are excerpts from an interview on Democracy, Now with Sarah Dowd, a registered nurse who treats Covid-19 patients.
I work at a public hospital within the Health and Hospitals Corporation system. We rely on public funding that has been cut continuously over the past several decades. We’re looking at a system of healthcare, not just in New York, but throughout the country, that prioritizes extracting a profit . . . people [are] running the system that are . . . absorbed with their bottom line, and the politicians who write the policy are owned by them. . . And really, the people that suffer are the people on the frontline and the patients.
And so, it’s been really interesting to hear this idea of nationalizing the healthcare system come out of this, because right now we’re dealing with a scarcity of resources and disjointed resources. And with a nationalized system, [we have the] ability to share resources across the system as needs arise.
This is not a time to be sitting on the sidelines. We need to make big demands of the system, that it be changed in a way that can make it so that in the future we’re not cut to the bone in a situation like this, that we have a robust healthcare system. I support Medicare for all, absolutely . . . and even further measures such as nationalizing the healthcare system.
