https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/05/business/nursing-staff-shortage-school-enrollment/index.html
Staffing shortages are the main reason why nursing schools are not able to accept more students who want to become registered nurses.
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(Kind of liking this in a selfish way, too. Because I was a tool and cutter grinder in my youth.)
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And this is how the US healthcare system collapses. When there is a nursing shortage and insufficient staff to train new ones, how can it recover?
It’s like a tree that leans a little bit, then a little bit more, until one day it crashes through the house. And it’s already leaning over pretty far.
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Yeah, I read this and the first thing I was thinking was “fuck Jeff Bezos, the rat bastard” and the second things I thought was “how dangerous is it to go on strike as a worker in Saudi Arabia”?
Because Saudi Arabia is world-notorious for how it treats its domestic workers.
I don’t usually post stuff from al Jazeera but they are Qatari and arguably closer to the action:
At least in the U.S., with all its history of violence against strikers and organizers, we can strike and maybe we get fired, but we might not get killed. Maybe.
(globally–)
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IMHO, the question is not whether the US healthcare system will collapse, it’s that it already has, but in stages. Mental health services collapsed a year or more ago, primary care is in the process of slow collapse, like Millenium Tower, and subspecialists are in denial that they will be next. Meanwhile, insurance companies are trying to gouge as much money as they can off of the corpse before it rots. Rural areas are feeling it most right now, but wealthier areas will get there. Some of us will hold out for a good while, but I think I have mentioned that every single peds in our areas is in the 50-59 age bracket, and there is no sign of young blood coming. It’s like the last Passenger Pigeon. We’re not extinct quite yet, but there is not a viable population left, so it will be with a whimper, not a bang.
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The health “care” and “insurance” industries have worked long and expensively against healthcare-for-all in the U.S. These corporations purchase congresscritters for what feels like eons now to undermine any real change in the way their industries do business.
/start incomplete receipts
Big Pharma:
https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary.php?cycle=2022&ind=h04
Hospitals / nursing homes:
https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary.php?ind=H02++
HMOs / heath services:
https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary.php?ind=H03++
Health insurance industry in 2021 alone? Barely chump-change to them:
https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary?cycle=2021&id=D000021819
… and 2022:
https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary?cycle=2022&id=D000021819
… and this year but it ain’t over:
https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary?cycle=2023&id=D000021819
For perspective, here’s 2023 so far and it’s only October lobbying (WTFTM) expenditures by the insurance industry [combined IIUC] and, well, fuck:
https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/industries/summary?id=F09
Greed kills.
but
It does not have to be this way.
And in some countries on this planet, it is not this way.
This is really really bad news.
It’s beyond Darwinism’s argument that only the strong healthy kids survive.
It targets the poor, and working families, people born with unlucky genetic outcomes, et al.
If children are the future (and they are), the U.S. is apparently not interested in having a future.
And I am ready to hang that on Democrats and Republicans alike.
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“something the powers that be would always oppose.
Until this last round I wrongly thought they just had a somewhat irrational obsession with inflation. Now I realize that’s a cover for the fact that they understand too well what full employment does - it gives workers, especially at the bottom, actual bargaining power.
And that can’t be allowed to happen ever again.”
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Bosses break out gilded age tactics for strikebreaking.
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My wife (an RN) suspects that they’ll hire from overseas via H1-B visas (and pay them less, natch). There was a shortage while she was working thru nursing school & when she finished, that’s how they’d dealt with it in the meantime.
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“The frontline healthcare workers of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions are excited to have reached a tentative agreement with Kaiser Permanente as of this morning,” the coalition posted Friday morning. “We are thankful for the instrumental support of Acting US Labor Secretary Julie Su.”
Increased wages, increased hiring. Wins for labor and for patients. This is a good thing.
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More evidence that power concedes nothing without a demand, and unions are the best* form of worker demand.
Well, maybe neck and neck with worker ownership.
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Biden don’t get no respect for his accomplishments.
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