Life expectancy

Thousands Of Minnesota Nurses Launch 3-Day Strike Over Pay

Some 15,000 nurses in Minneapolis and Duluth are seeking a more than 30% pay increase, while hospitals have offered 10%-12% over three years.

Thousands of nurses in Minnesota launched a three-day strike Monday, pressing for salary increases they say will help improve patient care by resolving understaffing stresses that have worsened in the coronavirus pandemic.

Some 15,000 nurses at seven health care systems in the Minneapolis and Duluth areas walked out, a number the union says makes it the largest strike ever by private-sector nurses. The affected hospitals said they have recruited temporary nurses and expected to maintain most services.

Scores of nurses began walking the picket line at 7 a.m. outside Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis, one of 15 hospitals affected. Clad in the red T-shirts of the Minnesota Nurses Association and carrying signs with such slogans as, “Something has got to give,” several said their chief concern was patient safety.

Tracey Dittrich, 50, a registered nurse at the hospital for nearly 24 years, said nurses are tired of “hospital administrators and managers that are telling us to do more.” The hospitals need more nurses and more support staff, and higher pay will help, she said.

“There are shifts where you have three critically ill patients, and you have to decide which patient gets the care, when,” Dittrich said. “I work with people all the time that go home every day and feel horrible because one child had to wait longer for medication, or another child needed to wait longer for an IV. Another child maybe had to wait for a breathing treatment because we just couldn’t get to them all fast enough.”

Union spokesman Sam Fettig said the nurses chose a three-day strike, rather than an open-ended walkout, out of concern for patients.

The hospitals have offered a 10%-12% wage increase over three years, but nurses are seeking more than 30%. Hospital leaders called their wage demands unaffordable, noting that Allina and Fairview hospitals have posted operating losses and that the cost of such sharp wage increases would be passed along to patients.

“The union rejected all requests for mediation and held fast to wage demands that were unrealistic, unreasonable and unaffordable,” several of the Twin Cities hospitals under strike said in a joint statement.

The statement said people with emergency issues should continue to call 911 or go to emergency rooms. It said despite staffing hospitals with “experienced nurse managers, trained replacement nurses and some existing traveler nurses” that people may see some delay in being treated.

Jean Ross, co-president of National Nurses United, billed as the largest union and professional association of registered nurses in the U.S., said more nurses across the country are pushing back and that most job actions revolve around the same core issues — staffing and pay.

“The pandemic did so many things in pointing out, clarifying and shining a light on what life is like in the hospitals and what nurses are expected to do, which is a lot with very little,” Ross said. “We have to have a bottom line where you just can’t shove any more patients on to that nurse.”

Kathy Misk, another registered nurse at Children’s, works in case management and helps families transition from hospital care to caring for their child at home. Misk said a shortage of nurses has sometimes required keeping “high-tech” children – those who need special equipment to breathe, for example – from going home as soon as they otherwise could. Raising pay could help the hospital keep nurses on staff, she said.

“You don’t retain nurses with low wages,” Misk said. “When you incentivize nurses with pay, what you’re saying to them is they have worth, and they are able to stay in one job.”

When asked about Misk’s statement that some children have not gone home as soon as they might have, Nick Petersen, a spokesman for Children’s, said children are admitted or discharged “based on the expert judgment of the medical professionals who care for them.”

The hospitals affected by the strike are operated by Allina Health, M Health Fairview, Children’s Hospital, North Memorial and HealthPartners. In Duluth, it is Essentia and St Luke’s.

Separately, in Wisconsin, a potential three-day strike by nurses at UW Health, one of the state’s largest health systems, that was set to start Tuesday was averted when the nurses and the UW Hospital board reached an agreement. Details weren’t immediately released.

The Minnesota nurses’ strike comes amid an upsurge in union activity nationwide.

A national railroad strike could begin as early as Friday unless Congress steps in to block it. The two largest railroad unions have been demanding that the major freight carriers go beyond a proposed deal recommended by arbitrators appointed by President Joe Biden.

Some high-profile companies, including Starbucks, are among those trying to stifle ongoing unionization efforts. Since late last year, more than 230 U.S. Starbucks stores have voted to unionize, which Starbucks opposes.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

: newsy.com

View

>>> Don’t Miss Today’s BEST Amazon Deals! <<<<

Why Does U.S. Life Expectancy Rank Poorly?

Life expectancy is a key metric used to determine the heath of a country. The World Bank says it’s improving around the world.

How long will you live? It could be an inspiring or scary question.

But to a demographer It’s neither. It’s a key metric that says a lot about the health of a country.

In 1960 the average American’s life expectancy was almost 70 years old, according to the World Bank.

The U.S. ranked 189th in the world.

Today the nation has made progress, with an average life expectancy of 77.

But other countries have made greater strides. As of 2020, the U.S. was ranked 61st out of 237 nations.

Why have other countries surged ahead? And how could the U.S. improve?

To answer these questions we’re focusing on three countries: the U.S., the richest country in the world, according to the World Bank; Japan, the third richest; and Chile, ranked 43rd.

We spoke to Joseph Chamie. He’s the former director of the United Nations Population Division.

“The U.S. was doing very well right after World War II in 1950, ’55, relative to those countries,” said Chamie.

During the post-war boom, Americans benefited from medical advances, like penicillin and open heart surgery.

Japanese men had a life expectancy of 24 during the war, thanks in part to combat and food shortages.

“Japan’s life expectancy was lower than the U.S. in the early fifties. Of course they have to rebuild their societies,” said Chamie.

The new Japanese government passed 32 health laws between 1946 and 1955 aimed at regulating doctors and nurses, requiring school lunches, reducing pollution and preventing infectious disease.

Japanese life expectancy shot up 14 years between 1947 and 1955, according to government data.

“In the case of Chile, it was even more remarkable,” Chamie said.

Chileans’ life expectancy was 54 years old in 1950.

“Chile in particular saw a dramatic increase in life expectancy. They were able to provide health care systems, developing that preventive care, dropping infant mortality rates,” Chamie said.

Meanwhile in 1961, Japan established universal health insurance.

The government covered half of everyone’s medical costs.

“But there are many factors in Japan that were contributing to a lower mortality. One of them, of course, was diet and obesity. Eating more fish and more vegetables than the American diet,” Chamie said.

Americans lived longer as the 20th century progressed, but we also developed some unhealthy habits.

“In the U.S. the diet started increasing with greater and greater reliance on prepared foods, commonly called junk foods, fast foods. More and more people involved in work and doing less exercise.”

“In the U.S., many people are lacking health care systems in place, so they are not taking preventive action early enough to deal with illnesses. Especially the last 20, 30 years, drug addiction, opioids have gotten a become an epidemic level proportion. Obesity has also gotten much higher,” said Chamie.

“Chile and Japan, they’re providing health care systems, and also supporting people so they feel integrated in society,” Chamie said. “They did some comparisons of Japanese who went to Hawaii and California. And you find that they changed their diet, increased obesity and also lower life expectancy because of that diet change.”

“We’re spending a great deal of money on our health care and doing not as well as many other countries, including China, Japan and Chile,” he continued. “Individual responsibility is certainly one area. Second, providing health care systems and adequate services to assist people so that they will live to old age.”

So many factors determine how long we’ll live. But Chamie says learning from other countries’ successes might help us improve longevity here at home.

: newsy.com

View

>>> Don’t Miss Today’s BEST Amazon Deals! <<<<

Washington, D.C., ‘Baby Bonds’ Program Aims To Close Wealth Gap

The program is currently underway in D.C. and will likely be watched closely by other states considering the same idea.

Economic inequality has consequences. For poor people, it can hit everything from life expectancy to education.

But a new program in the nation’s capital is trying to defeat those outcomes.

It’s called Baby Bonds, though it works more like a trust fund.

Children of the city’s poorest residents will get up to $25,000 by the time they reach adulthood.

The idea was first proposed by two economists in 2010 and was brought to the mainstream by a 2016 presidential candidate.

Sen. Cory Booker was an early supporter of the program in D.C. and emphasized that while this helps low-income families across race, there’s one in particular that struggles more.

“We need to put forward a bold, aspirational vision for racial and economic justice in this country. I think Baby Bonds is a foundational piece of that,” he said. “Right now, we live in an America where the members of the Forbes 400 wealthiest American households hold more wealth than all Black families in the United States combined.”

The racial wealth gap is undeniable. Data from Brookings shows “the median white American in their early thirties had $29,000 more wealth than the median Black American of the same age.” The gap is even bigger among older adults.

“Wealth is functional. Wealth allows you to generate other forms of resources and provides economic security,” said Darrick Hamilton, one of the two economists who proposed Baby Bonds.

He testified before a Washington, D.C., council committee, arguing the idea isn’t unprecedented in American life.

“This idea of Baby Bonds — although I get a lot of credit for architecting it in its modern-day form — is as old as the nation’s founding. Thomas Payne talked about a scenario of Baby Bonds where he said that every American should be endowed with some plot of land so that when they become an adult they’ll be able to attend to that land and have the benefits of economic security of the benefits of that land.”

Critics say it’s expensive and unproven.

But Hamilton points to post-depression social programs launched by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and others.

“I think we can look into our New Deal past and see that a White asset-based middle class was formed as a result of government entitlement,” Hamilton said. “Programs like the GI bill, the Fair Housing Act that literally seeded Americans with some capital resources.”

The first four years of the Baby Bond program is estimated to cost $32 million.

Still, the program is currently underway in D.C. and will likely be watched closely by other states considering the same idea.

: newsy.com

View

>>> Don’t Miss Today’s BEST Amazon Deals! <<<<