In the debate over health care reform, those on the frontlines of this crisis - namely, our nation's nurses - provide valuable insight. President Obama, who remarked this year at a townhall, "I just love nurses," has publicly addressed the importance of RNs as frontline caregivers, noting that in some rural areas, nurses are a community's only provider of health care. He's also pointed out that it's often nurses, not doctors, who make critical health care decisions for patients.

So when a registered nurse of 25 years - SEIU 1991 President Martha Baker, RN - recently pens an op-ed in the Miami Heraldon fixing our health care system, it's worth considering as part of our national debate. Says Baker:

Our system -- which brings the uninsured to our emergency-room doors at the point when they must receive the most expensive form of care at the most advanced stages of illness -- is broken. Our patients who can pay end up paying more than they can afford because an easily treatable condition has escalated to a crisis. More than the financial care, the suffering of patients and the risk of mortality or permanent disability increases when chronic conditions are allowed to develop untreated....

Today's health system, which leaves more than 47 million Americans -- more than 600,000 of them in South Florida -- with no healthcare coverage at all, drastically distorts the entire system and adds enormously to the cost of healthcare for everyone else. As the costs in the system rise, more people are pushed into the ranks of the uninsured, which forces them to go without the primary care that in most cases would keep them healthy.

Those of us who are fortunate enough to be covered by insurance plans still know they can be expensive, complicated and loaded with trap doors. A recent report by the American Medical Association has documented that fully 60 percent of Americans who declare bankruptcy are forced to do so by healthcare costs. A public health-insurance plan is necessary to ensure adequate coverage, foster choice and competition and bring down costs.

Fortunately there is a way out of this vicious cycle. With a healthcare-reform package that ensures affordable coverage, includes a strong public health-insurance option and requires employers to share in the responsibility of covering workers, we can avoid an even more disastrous future.

Now is the time to get healthcare reform right and actually produce workable choices for all, including a public health-insurance option.

As a registered nurse, Baker speaks directly from personal experience, and bears witness to the challenges Floridians encounter with our health care system every day. As a union leader, she understands the financial burdens inflicted on working Floridians by an inefficient, badly broken system.

As the battle for health care reform comes down to the wire doctors and nurses represent an invaluable voice in this debate. And with this week's endorsement of the health care reform bills before Congress by the American Medical Association, it's clear that nurses and doctor's alike agree that we cannot afford to wait.