Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/12559
Saturday, June 26, 2010 – Daily News – 7A Nurses union to bring gripes to Meg Whitman’s hometown OAKLAND (AP) — The feud between California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman and a powerful nurses union intensified Friday as the California Nurses Association announced they would be bringing their gripes to the Republican businesswoman’s hometown. Union leaders at a news conference Fri- day railed on Whitman, whom they accuse of bullying nurses for their private infor- mation. ‘‘Meg Whitman is trying to push around the registered nurses of California because she has gotten away with pushing around people in her past,’’ said Jill Furillo, a reg- istered nurse and Southern California director of the CNA. Nurses from across the state would attend a July forum in the tony Silicon Valley enclave of Atherton, Furillo said. The event’s theme, ‘‘Nurses Won’t Be Pushed Around,’’ is a thinly veiled refer- ence to Whitman’s settlement with an eBay employee she allegedly pushed while chief executive of the auction website. Whitman spokeswoman Sarah Pompei called the CNA a partisan organization backing Democratic candidate Jerry Brown and said the union has not allowed Whitman to submit a letter to its members stating her positions. ‘‘They are knowingly misrepresenting Meg’s positions on the issues and the opin- ions of California’s nurses,’’ Pompei said. The CNA has endorsed Democrat Jerry Brown, and members protested outside Whitman events during the gubernatorial primary with an actress portraying a char- acter dubbed ‘‘Queen Meg.’’ The conflict between the two camps boiled over after Whitman asked the CNA Meg Whitman for a mailing list of its 85,000 members. The union called the request an invasion of privacy and refused. Whitman’s campaign circumvented the union by obtaining what it said was a pub- licly available list of registered nurses in the state and sending mailers advising nurses to learn about Whitman themselves rather than ‘‘take the union boss’s word for it.’’ Whitman also launched a website claiming that an internal poll showed Whitman trailed Brown among California nurses by only 3 percentage points. The union called the poll a partisan push poll and said Whitman’s campaign was using it to denigrate the CNA. California has about 350,000 registered nurses. High-speed Internet use, need in the north state varies By LAURA URSENY MediaNews Group CHICO — Rural pockets of Northern California are not hot beds of Internet use, nor do they want to be, according to a federally funded study recently released. A surprising number of respondents to a survey are sure they can live without the Internet, and aren’t very interested in enhancing broadband service, especially if they have to pay for it. On the other hand, those communities that have Inter- net access don’t know what they’d do without it. Users say they find information on health care, personal safety, and pursue distance learning, as well buying goods, and communicate with friends and family. Telemedicine that con- nects patients and medical staffs via the Internet is a huge benefit, rural residents told questioners. A telephone survey and personal follow-up through the Center for Economic Development at Chico State University questioned busi- nesses, residents and govern- ment officials in 12 Northern California counties. The study included calls to about 4,200 individuals. According to project man- ager Cathy Emerson, 15 to 17 percent of survey respondents said they do not use the Inter- net, which she said is higher than the national average. “This is a lifestyle choice,” said Emerson, by way of explanation. But those who did have the service feel they can’t do without it. In the 12-county area, Colusa, Yuba and Plumas counties have the most busi- nesses with Internet. Butte, Glenn, Shasta and Lassen counties are in the middle. Siskiyou, Tehama, Lake, Modoc and Sutter counties have the least. Household service, howev- er, is different, with Butte, Shasta, Lassen and Sutter having the most. Tehama, Glenn, Modoc and Colusa are in the middle, and Plumas, Yuba, Lake and Siskiyou have the least. Because such a high per- centage of residents are not clamoring for the service, Internet service providers would not likely be anxious to enter rural areas which are more difficult to serve, said Emerson. Of nonuse response, Emer- son said, “They don’t use it. They don’t want it.” But Emerson believes the demand for broadband in the rural north is stronger than what her study shows, and that not everyone has been heard. “We have to be respectful of the lifestyle choice of those who say thanks, but no thanks.” Respondents said they pre- ferred to communicate face- to-face or by phone, rather than by e-mail, she said. With that information in hand, another study is about to begin that focus on the Chico and Redding areas, she said, which are likely more active and supportive. Emerson noted Internet servers in Northern Califor- nia include Comcast, AT&T, DigitalPath and Clearwire, yet there are pockets where service is not available. “People don’t want to pay more for (getting) the ser- vice,” said Emerson. Additionally, municipal and county government offi- cials interviewed by Emerson in areas where Internet wasn’t readily available or lightly Doctors hit by cost of whooping cough vaccine LOS ANGELES (AP) — California’s potentially record whooping cough epi- demic has spotlighted complaints by some rural doctors that vaccines to prevent that disease and others are too expensive to pro- vide. The problem isn’t in supply, but in how much — or how little — insurance compa- nies are willing to reimburse doctors for providing the shots that prevent illnesses. Even when insurers cover the cost of vaccines, they don’t pay for storing and administering them, said California Acade- my of Family Physicians spokesman Tom Reilly. Providing one round of vaccines to a child can cost a doctor’s office $450, he said. The group’s complaint only applies to those in the insured population. Uninsured children qualify for their shots through the federal Vaccines for Children Program or Medi-Cal, which provides the vaccines free of charge and gives doctors a reimburse- ment fee. Additionally, the California Department of Public Health provides county health departments and hospital systems with free doses of the vaccines to administer, and there are no shortages in supply, according to spokesman Ken August. A survey published in the Journal of Pediatrics in December 2008 found that 10 percent of doctors who vaccinated privately insured children were considering dropping the service because it was too expensive. Dr. Sumana Reddy’s rural practice in Salinas serves a small farming community and she takes care of entire families, from birth to elderly care. Sometimes, her payroll can’t be met because there are up to $40,000 in out- standing charges for vaccines to insurers, racked up over 60-day periods, who are lag- gard in payments, if they pay at all, she said. ‘‘Even doctors who work hard to pur- chase the vaccine at the best available rate often cannot match the low reimbursement that insurance pays for that vaccine,’’ Reddy said. ‘‘There’s no other existing business model where people are literally handing cash over to their customers, and that’s what makes this vaccine issue so difficult.’’ The physicians’ group has proposed leg- islation, AB2093, to require insurers to pay administration costs for vaccines, including the whooping cough vaccine. The lobbying group California Associa- tion of Health Plans opposes the bill as overreaching on the type of costs that should be covered. ‘‘The legislature is enamored with man- dating services and payments to providers while railing against the high cost of health insurance,’’ said Patrick Johnston, president of the CAHP. The legislation will raise costs and prices of premiums, Johnston said. The bill is to be heard by the Senate Health Committee next week. On Wednesday, state health officials announced that whooping cough is now an epidemic in California, on pace to break a 50-year record for infections, with 910 cases and 600 suspected cases to date in 2010. Five babies under 3 months of age have died of the disease this year. used said they weren’t willing to take on a campaign to expand service because their constituents weren’t that interested and the infrastruc- ture costs were high. “It’s not a priority to them,” Emerson said officials told her. Nevertheless, turning the spotlight on broadband has been constructive to Northern California, she said. “This really pushed the conversation into the public spotlight. It’s raised the con- sciousness of what broadband is and what it can do.” A “high number” of people are happy with their Internet service and didn’t want to pay for anything more, she said. “Communities need to become involved in a proac- tive role supporting Internet service providers.” Citing the recent surge of interest in the “Google: Fiber for Communities” initiative, there seems to be more inter- est in “doing it locally,” she noted. Chico is among the com- munities that applied for the Google competition of get- ting extremely high-speed broadband. But also out of the Google effort has come interest in exploring how to communities can bring high- speed broadband themselves. “People here want it to happen and the conversation is happening,” Emerson said. To expand broadband ser- vice in Northern California, Emerson said two factors are key: “Broadband subscrip- tions need to increase, and communities need to take a proactive role in supporting, encouraging and driving the process. That will result in better infrastructure being designed, installed and deployed,” she said. Expanding broadband has been a federal and California initiative, with funding com- ing through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that set aside $2.5 billion for studying rural areas like Northern California. Funding for the Northern California study came through the California Emerging Technology Fund and the Redding-based McConnell Foundation. Laura Urseny is a reporter with the Chico Enterprise- Record