Prescription for Healthcare – Rose Roach “Unions and Healthcare Workers” February 2024

Welcome to Prescription for Healthcare, a podcast collaboration between the WFHB Local News and Medicare for All Indiana, broadcasting the second Thursday of every month (except this month, 3rd Thu) as part of the Local News at 5:15 PM. This month we interview Rose Roach, former director of the Minnesota Nurses Association and currently National Coordinator of the Labor Campaign for Single Payer. We talk about how nurses and doctors around the country are joining unions as they push back against the growing corporatization of the healthcare “industry.” “Doctors and nurses are the conscience of health care. They are the voice for us as patients. Corporate health care doesn’t give two hoots about us, but not so when it comes to our doctors and our nurses.  It is now evident that the only way to radically change a health care system that is nothing more than a health care marketplace these days, that is being bought up by Wall Street solely for the purpose of generating profit, is to radically engage care providers in the collective struggle that we are all in for a humane, patient-provider centered system.  That’s why I  believe that we are seeing more and more physicians exploring unions as a way to ensure their ability to practice medicine as they’ve been trained to do. Not to practice according to the corporate bosses who have been trained to make money. No one should profit from another human being suffering. Our doctors and nurses are coming together to fight against that ever growing focus of our health care system.” – Rose Roach Minnesota Nurses Association Nurses at IU Health’s University and Methodist hospitals eye unionizing Follow Medicare for All Indiana on our Facebook page. Medicare for All Indiana is the Indiana Chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program “If Not Now, Tell Me When” by Carrie Newcomer is used with permission.