The California Nurses Association has decided to take one of their most important issues to Iowa in an attempt to impact the candidates as the try to win the January caucuses.

By Jesse Russell

On the heels of an announcement by the Iowa state AFL-CIO that they support a single payer healthcare plan, the California Nurses Association has launched a series of ads in that state calling on Democratic candidates to do the same. Shum Preston with the National nurses Organizing Committee says that the top tier candidates have proposed “half baked healthcare plans”

[Preston1]: Have the guts to stand up for a healthcare plan instead of just making it look like they are trying to solve the problem.

Preston said the registered nurses support the single payer model because the for-profit model just doesn’t work:

[Preston2] When you have the for-profit insurance companies taking 30 percent of care dollars off the top for healthcare there is no way you can guarantee healthcare for all of us.

He added that they will continue hounding the candidates until the top tier wakes up and realizes they are out of step with most Americans:

[Preston3]: They are basically all describing much more of the same and that’s a problem for them because poll after poll finds healthcare as the most pressing issue.