Diane Dwire, RN, testifies on behalf of NYSNA at Gottfried Single Payer Hearings

With 35 years of nursing experience, including public health administration, Diane Dwire, RN and retired NYNSA member, was an outstanding participant at the first of six public hearings being held by the Assembly Committee on Health, chaired by Assemblymember Richard Gottfried. The series of hearings are being held across New York, in support of single payer health coverage. Hearings were held December 4 in Syracuse and December 8 in Rochester, and will be followed by four more; click here for more information on the hearings.

“Although our nation is fast-approaching the $3 trillion mark in the amount that goes to healthcare in the U.S. annually,” Dwire told the Committee, “our results, our healthcare outcomes, are mediocre, and in some instances, poor.”

“What upsets me so very much, as a nurse and public health manager, is to see what we lose in this current system, a system dominated by commercial insurance in healthcare,” she also said.

“As healthcare professionals we know what patient need is about,” Dwire testified. “And we can create a rational, comprehensive system built upon that understanding. That is what single payer is all about.”