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ANA President & FPB Alumna
Rebecca Patton joins President
Obama in the Rose Garden to
Help Urge Health Care Reform
If you want to know what’s wrong with
U.S. health care, ask a nurse.
That’s what President Obama did, and he
was joined by members of the American
Nurses Association (ANA) in the White
House Rose Garden Wednesday, July 15,
2009, as he reaffirmed his commitment to
reform and his confidence in its success.
Rebecca M. Patton, MSN ’98, RN,
CNOR, president of the ANA, led a
contingent of nurses at the press conference
representing the 2.9 million nurses in the
United States of America. Their support
stems from the recognition that this reform
will allow the citizens of our nation who
lack health insurance, or whose health
insurance costs more than they can afford,
to gain stability and security. Ms. Patton
and President Obama encouraged
lawmakers, nurses, and other healthcare
professionals across the country to voice
their commitment to healthcare reform. A
nurse for nearly 30 years, Ms. Patton
resides in Lakewood, Ohio, and was elected
to serve her second two-year term as
president of the American Nurses
Association in June 2008.
“I was mentioning to Becky [Patton] that
when I was in the state legislature, I was
the chairman of the Health and Human
Services Committee, and one of my
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strongest allies in Springfield, Illinois, the
state capital there, was the nurses
association,” President Obama said at the
press conference. “We did a lot of work
together to make sure that nurses were
getting treated properly, being paid
properly, getting the overtime they needed,
the time off that they needed, getting the
ratios that they needed, and so I have a
wonderful history working side-by-side
with all of you to make sure we have the
best health care system in the world. And,
as a consequence, I want to say ‘thank you’
for all the support you’re providing for
health insurance reform for the American
people. I am so pleased to be joined by all
of you. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it
again: I just love nurses.”
Ms. Patton spoke passionately of the
dangers this nation faces when adequate
health care is not readily available. She
discussed the flaws of the system from a
nurse’s perspective, as a witness to the
distress caused by denial, cancellation or
lack of health insurance for patients. Ms.
Patton and the ANA stand in favor of
Obama’s health care reform as a way to
correct the injustices the current system
carries with it.
The Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing Case Western Reserve University 21