MedStar’s NNU Nurses Win Rollback of Health Care Cost Hikes
In 2012, MedStar Washington (D.C.) Hospital Center—where some 1,850 registered nurses and members of National Nurses United ( NNU ) work—unilaterally instituted sweeping reductions and changes in the nurses’ health benefits.
A federal judge last week upheld an arbitrator's ruling that MedStar acted unlawfully and must reimburse the nurses for any increased costs they paid and roll back the reductions and changes.
The new deductibles and co-pays, in some cases, were triple the out-of-pocket amounts that nurses were required to pay for care. MedStar’s changes also penalized nurses for seeking care outside of the MedStar Health network, forcing many families to sever longstanding relationships with their doctors.
Vanessa Rose-Wilder, a nurse on the surgical intensive care unit, says:
As a mother of an 11-year-old son with spinal bifida, I have relied on the experts at Children’s National Medical Center for his care since birth. Due to increased costs caused by MedStar’s unilateral change in my health benefits, I have had to delay an important surgery for my son. I am happy to report that this ruling will assure that my son gets care by the experts.
Stephen Frum, a nurse on the burn/surgical intensive care unit and shop steward, told the Washington Business Journal :
I think probably workers in general, and nurses maybe even more so, want choice in where they go for health care. And they don't want to be directed by their employer to use their employer's facility exclusively. This narrowness of choices is repugnant to nurses.
Health care industry experts say more and more health care employers are seeking to exploit the recession and rollbacks of employee standards in other industries to push huge cuts for health care workers despite the hospitals once again making record profits. Frum says:
Because we have a strong union, we were able to stop MedStar’s attempt to unilaterally change the terms and conditions of our employment. Unfortunately, the hospital wasted tens of thousands of dollars in these legal proceedings that should have gone for patient care, when it could have simply respected the rights of its bedside caregivers from the beginning.
