I applaud Mary Kay Sessa's comments (Letters, January) regarding Mary K. Wakefield's Viewpoint ("Nurses and the Affordable Care Act," September 2010) and the partisan politicization of our professional nursing journal. I, too, am a long-time AJN subscriber-since 1969-and I'm not going to renew my subscription.
The Policy and Politics column always takes a pro-Democrat, pro-Obama stance on health care reform, which is a polarizing issue. By continually publishing views that reflect the agenda of the Democrats, AJN does a great disservice to its readers.
The January Policy and Politics column ("What Future for the Affordable Care Act?"), for example, states, "It's important for nurses to educate the public on the benefits of health care reform." Yet another example of the bullying Ms. Sessa describes. Yes, nurses need to educate the public, but on both sides of the issue.
Chris Addington, BS, RN, CNOR
Stillwater, MN
Editor's note: AJN has featured articles that call for and support health care reform not because of any partisan stance, but because, as nurses, we hear about and see firsthand the evidence that our current health care system is broken. Millions are uninsured and underinsured. It seems obvious that a better system is needed.
That said, we do seek to publish articles that present differing opinions. But although we actively solicit manuscripts expressing divergent perspectives for Viewpoint and other columns-we've even solicited the Tea Party-we don't receive them. We encourage readers-particularly those with a point of view different from what they see in the pages of AJN-to review AJN's author guidelines and submit manuscripts to http://www.editorialmanager.com/ajn.