Pelosi’s Present to the Nurses’ Unions
3rd November 2009
Buried on page 1373 of Speaker Pelosi’s 1990-page health care bill (pdf) is a provision that amounts to a present for another reliable Democratic constituency, nurses’ unions. The section authorizes the Secretary of Labor to establish a grant program to provide nursing education. To qualify for the grant, an entity must be either “jointly administrered by a health care employer and a labor union,” or by “one or more organizations which represent the interests of direct care health care workers or staff nurses and in which the direct health care workers or staff nurses have direct input as to the leadership of the organization.”