I wonder what nurses he has been talking to. A bunch of nurses I work with passionately oppose this.
The nurses for the County hospitals that are members of Public Employee Unions here in CA are all for it of course.
From the article:
At the announcement with Obama were Becky Patton, president of the American Nurses Association, representing 2.9 million nurses; Dr. Mary Wakefield, administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration at the Department of Health and Human Services, the administration’s highest ranking nurse; Keisha Walker, an RN, currently a senior research nurse at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health; and Dr. Rebecca Wiseman, nurse and assistant professor of adult health at the University of Maryland School of Nursing.
Apparently he's talking to union officials and academics. We hardly needed a news release to inform us of support from those two quarters!
It is a tiny minority of nurses who join those organizations and I would bet money that none of them have been anywhere close to actual patient care for at least 10 years.