This weekend, Iowa saw a different kind of town hall forum.

At the Macbride hall, on the University of Iowa campus, dozens of signed scrubs were displayed with messages of support for health insurance reform--and painful stories of hardship because of our current health care system.

Signed by health care providers from the various University of Iowa hospitals and clinics, these messages are from people on the front lines: people who deal with sick patients and their families every day. Patients who, under our current system, do not get better, but worse.

Across the country, nurses, doctors, and other healthcare workers providers are partnering with their hospitals and healthcare facilities to sign surgical scrubs with stories and messages about our broken healthcare system--and why healthcare reform is needed.

Since the national launch of "Every Patient Matters" campaign with the Partnership for Quality Care the second week of August, numerous SEIU Locals with members working in health care facilities have already held scrub-signing actions at health care facilities their members work at.

Last week at Whidden Hospital in Everett, MA, members of SEIU Local 615 and Local 1199 joined together to sign scrubs.

When lawmakers return to Washington in September, nurses, doctors, and other caregivers will deliver tens of thousands of these signed scrubs to the Capitol to ensure the voices of front-line caregivers and the stories of their patients are heard in the debate over healthcare reform.

Looking to get involved in the Every Patient Matters campaign? Let us know.

The Partnership for Quality Care (PQC) is a national labor-management coalition committed to ensuring quality, affordable healthcare for everyone in America. It includes public, private, religious, teaching and nonprofit hospitals nationwide and integrated health systems; and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Our members care for more than 60 million patients annually.

Once again, big business is determined to keep their profits at the expense of affordable health care coverage. The profile of Florida's own Rick Scott in last week's Jacksonville.com shows how far we have to go in the fight for quality, affordable coverage.

Founder of Solantic, a pay-for-care business, Rick Scott has a vested interest in maintaining a monopoly on our state's health care system:

Borrowing from the retail industry, Solantic posts its prices on a board above the receptionist's desk. There are only three prices available. An $89 trip tends to be for cold sufferers who just need a prescription for some antibiotics. At the $149 level, something more complex like a throat culture may be involved. And the $229 bill is there to capture complex cases, like broken limbs.

Co-founder Karen Bowling said the goal is to expand to 1,000 locations as the
company adopts a franchising model.

Meanwhile, Rick Scott is positioning his involvement as a benevolent, self-less gesture--despite from being forced to resign as CEO of Columbia/HCA healthcare in 1997. With political contributions totaling, "$54,000 last year, all to Republicans," and a contribution of "$5 million dollars of his own money into Conservatives for Patient's Rights", it's clear he's a man who knows which side of his bread is buttered.

Don't let the Rick Scotts of this country win the battle. Health care should not be about big business taking advantage of customers without a better choice. Quality, affordable health care coverage is a right that everyone in Florida--and the country--deserves.

Speak out--Write a letter to the editor in support of quality, affordable coverage for EVERYONE--today. http://action.seiu.org/page/speakout/stopscottslies

Many of our nation's health care facilities are not prepared to protect health care workers from exposures to pandemic influenza, according to a new report compiled by the SEIU and six other unions, "Healthcare Workers in Peril: Preparing to Protect Worker Health and Safety During Pandemic Influenza." To determine the level of worker safety and health preparedness on a facility basis, a "pandemic flu preparedness survey" was distributed to 104 healthcare facilities in 14 states over the course of 2008.

In the event of a widespread flu outbreak, health care workers would have increased vulnerability to the virus, both through their normal everyday activities and in the health care environment where sick patients come for care. The report results indicate that a number of health care facilities have made some progress in preparing for a pandemic flu epidemic - but "some" progress does not equal nearly "enough" preparedness, given the high risks of a potential pandemic influenza outbreak, which typically strikes three to four times a century.

Report Findings: Only 4 percent of surveyed union leaders representing health care workers reported that their workplaces were "very ready" to respond sufficiently to an influenza pandemic, while another 33 percent felt their facilities were "ready for most things." While reading over this report myself, I was surprised to discover that more than a third of the clinics surveyed have no pandemic flu plan in place at all. Forty-three percent of survey respondents said that, given the current level of preparedness at their facility to minimize personal exposure while caring for infected patients, "most or some members will stay home" in the event of a pandemic outbreak. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has issued guidelines for preventing the spread of a pandemic flu disease that that fall into this line of thinking, recommending that during emerging health threats people should stay home from work or school and limit contact with others to keep from infecting them.

This advice clearly makes sense, as sick employees going to work contributes to the spread of diseases like swine flu.