The three-day strike by some 75,000 health care workers of the Kaiser Permanente System, the private medical system with 39 hospitals across the U.S., will be over early Saturday morning, Oct. 7, but with more protest actions pending. It is to date the most dramatic of several recent strike actions by nurses and others. This week’s protest spotlights the fact that large sections of the U.S. medical delivery system are failing. Earlier in 2023, some 14,000 nurses in New York went on strike.
The latest from the Kaiser Permanente workers is a union statement issued this morning, reviewing the core demands. There is no agreement at present with Kaiser Permanente, and talks are to be held Oct. 12 and 13. Among the issues to be addressed are the harmful effects of KP’s outsourcing of so many health care functions and jobs, which relates to the basic demands of increasing wages and fixing the extreme staff shortages.
Emergency Care: Look at the worsening situation of U.S. medical emergency departments across the U.S. Those in top “markets” (meaning where the income level is relatively higher), such as in Northern Virginia, function. But across much of the U.S., there are hours-long waits, crowding, and impossible conditions for staff as well as for patients. The average wait time in California, a ProPublica survey published in June found, was 5 hours and 34 minutes. Waits of 24 hours or longer are not uncommon in many cities. In rural areas, many counties lack any emergency department at all.
