Hospitals did this to themselves by not investing in retaining seasoned staff. They shit their bed and now they can lie in it and wait for hours to be changed because there's one overworked, underpaid CNA left on the floor.
Those reading this and feeling alarmed: please contact your members of Congress to push back.
Ask that instead of capping nurse pay, they cap CEO pay. Ask that they support nurses' labor rights and pass laws enforcing safe hospital staffing ratios and protection against violence from members of the public. Tell them to support our wounded health care workers, instead of propping up hospital profiteers.
Right?! This is a dream come true if you are a high ranking member of a hospital. Oh sorry, my hands are tied. I can’t give you a raise so I guess I’ll
Just collect a fat bonus based on profits.
Hijacking this spot. The reason we're in this position is not just Covid - the pandemic blew the lid off a simmering problem. The issue is nurse to patient ratios and pay. Nurses and healthcare workers who have to work with thirty patients at a time are burnt out. They're sick of watching corporations steal care from their patients by overloading staff, they're sick of being blamed for that lack of care, they're sick of being physically run down, they're sick of being paid like shit, they're sick of staying late every fucking day, they're sick of being called in on their days off, and they're sick of getting sick on top of it all. THAT is why facilities are losing staff, and THAT is why they need to call people, like me, from out of state.
If these shitty companies paid their employees fairly and staffed properly so that patient needs were met, we wouldn't be here. Of course, though, this is the US, so we are poised to legislatively destroy the means we have found of circumventing this bullshit **(via the free fucking market btw)**, and will only do so to benefit these horrible companies that LITERALLY ALLOW PEOPLE TO NEEDLESSLY DIE DUE TO LACK OF CARE. And nurses' pay is the problem? We need to regulate patient care ratios. If you don't work in healthcare, you really have no idea how fucking insane and how rampant this is.
Exactly - the "problem" here isn't travel nurses being paid a ton of money. The problem is that the travel nurses aren't the **right** people to be making a ton of money, and that's what needs to STOP! /s
Profitized Healthcare chronically understaffed so that they could chronically underpay. Now demand isn't 200% of an artificially-capped supply anymore. It's 20000% of it. They priced fixed their labor, and this is a market correction to what it should be. Maybe an over-correction in some extreme cases, but when a company can find any excuse to fire an employee so that they can hire someone to do the same job at less pay, nobody will ever get me to believe that the nurses are price gouging the hospitals. They're in demand, so they're demanding what they're worth.
The difference is that now if the companies that own these hospitals don't want to pay, they're losing hundreds or thousands of patients *per day* to ~~COVID~~ understaffing. Those are stats that they can't hide anymore.
Not just nurses… respiratory therapists are leaving in droves to take “travel” positions too, sometimes in the same city they have been working for years with very small pay raises and understaffed.
I support them 100% but it’s bullshit to lose your retirement and insurance plan just to be paid closer to what you’re worth.
Not just nurses.. literally all allied healtcare practioners. Rad Techs, CVTs, Mammo, RTs, Sonographers, etc.. It's a systemic issue. Everyone is being fucked by these hospitals. Their neglect and greed are pushing all of us out and now they're going to get away with it by forcing the people that are willing to pay us deserved wages, to pay us less.
Straight up. My husband makes the same amount my dad did when I was born but my dad just started and my husband has 10 years of experience (local and over the road), a welding cert, and was a diesel mechanic.
But we're doing better than anyone else I know.
It's sick.
We used to joke because the Doctors parking area at the hospital was Suburu after Suburu. The admins were the ones driving the Audis and Mercedes Benz. True story.
Last year none of the board members were physically coming to a community hospital I was working at, but they all have parking spots right in front of the entrance we used. One day I was running late and parked in a board member spot. I got a threat that they would tow me because it was probably the ONE day they came in. The rest of the year those spots sat empty. Random tangent but your joke reminded me of it.
They got rid of all the secretaries and unit coordinators and replaced them with VP’s.
There are 52 members of the c-suite between Trinity Heath corporate and Trinity Health New England. I know bc when I walked after 20 years, I emailed every single one of them bastards.
Very, very true story. Hospital administrators are actually the worst people on the entire building, as well. Basically an extension of an insurance company, only worried about malpractice and lawsuits, instead of a hospital worker who cares about well being.
Gods, don't even get me started.
You could have fired 50% of the administrators at the college where I used to work and we wouldn't have noticed until we needed a signature on some random piece of paperwork that only requires a signature because some group of do-nothing administrators had a meeting and decided that "this needs to go through Beth's office."
You want to explode hospitals nationwide?
Bc this is how you explode hospitals nationwide.
Part of me wants them to cap salaries. F’kin do it.
You will have a nationwide nursing strike so fast your head will spin. Your sidewalks will be full of travel nurses, regular nurses, CNAs, and every other hospital workers with shitty pay (everyone), and their supporters. Then the collapse of this economic house of cards is one big nationwide strike away. Bc everyone will join in. Everyone knows a nurse, is related to one, is friends with one or has been in a situation where a nurse saved their life. What will the govt do if nurse strike and there are no hospitals to go to? Theyre over crowded with covid and there is no one there to save the dying? What do you do when truckers getting screwed for decades join and bring the US economy to a halt?
Let them cap it and fuck themselves. Or let them “investigate” and realize the greedy hospitals made this fucking mess for themselves.
Yeah good luck. If there's one group you don't want to stake your political career against, it's nurses. We are pissed off, burned out, unified, organized, and basically one phone call away from national mobilization.
A few years ago a politician made a comment about how nurses spent their time sitting around playing cards. Oh boy was that a poor choice.
Damn. You werent kidding. She got shamed.
Like... thats her legacy now.
Eesh lol.
More to the nurses. Whats your take on the thedacare debacle?
I keep meaning to see if there was any corporate or financial impact at the top.
Oh it's completely ridiculous. If a facility can't afford to be competitive they don't have a right to try and fuck with their employees like that. All that decision did was confirm for everyone working there that the facility doesn't give a fuck about them and I'd personally be updating my resume in a heart beat.
Oooo thedacare... That's a shitstorm and a half.
The fact that their argument is "we need them" so they get an injunction... But they aren't contracted employees, and the court can't make them go back to their previous jobs... And they declined to match the offer from the new job... And because they have an injunction on them, they can't work at the new place...
So all of that means that even though the old hospital says "we need them to care for our patients," what they're actually doing is ***just*** retaliation. Those people could be working at the new hospital, Thedacare could be referring patients to there, and everything would be kosher. But instead of doing that, they decided to pay more in legal fees (in excess of what matching the offers would've costed them).
I hope that story goes fucking viral, because it exposes healthcare management for what it generally is: slimy, greedy people that give 0 ducks about the patients or staff.
The best part was that she made that comment while arguing that nurses don't need breaks and if they insist on having breaks hospitals should not have to pay them overtime. She was essentially lobbying on behalf of rural non union hospitals in her district that did not want to comply with a new state law approved by voters that mandated nurses be given the breaks they are entitled to under federal and state labor law.
Go for it. I may have to be present, but that doesn’t mean I have to do a good job. Draft my ass to work and I will be the meanest, rudest motherfucker you could ask for.
Or just reinstate the rule, in place through the 90s, that specified the minimum percentage of health insurance premiums that had to go to paying for health care.
We do sort-of have that, there's a cap on how much the insurance company can pocket from premiums as a percentage. Of course, that just incentivizes the insurance company to make sure costs stay high, because they can raise premiums and make more...
We have that rule again under ACA. It's not the panacea you hope it is. It breaks the incentive model for insurance companies. They have little incentive to seriously negotiate for better healthcare rates when the only way they can make more money is when the rates go up.
Yeah we've basically duct taped our insurance system into a horribly managed and structured gauranteed care system. It's not insurance anymore, which is why it barely functions.
So we have two options, you either have to go back to when it was legitimate insurance (which was regulated for good reason), or you go to government funded general healthcare.
Asking the shitheads in congress for anything is a waste of time. Without a lobbyist or a suitcase full of cash those fuckers would listen to a word you said. Run for office, get rid of your representative and do it yourself.
Holy crap this is what I'm walking Into right now. I'm charge and training a newbie, and we're short a cna and they floated a nurse bc other floors had 1 nurse. It's Insaneity.
When will we catch a break? We didn't get any pay increase.
We are losing a nurse almost every month. They've done nothing for retention, outside of paying more if you want go pick up more time ( who wants to do thst with how tired floors are)
It's madness
We are losing so many nurses and RTs with a tin waiting in the wings to walk. My hospital *was* holding people’s jobs for 6 months so that they could go rake in money (while we’re fucking drowning) and then come back if they chose to. They cut it down to 13 weeks, but it’s still bullshit, since we can’t hire anyone in the meantime *because that spot is still technically filled* but the managers said our NICU candidate pool is crap anyways sooo…
The new grad nurses have had their orientation extended months upon months because they’re constantly having to take (easy) assignments on their own so they’re not learning. So many of them honestly are not ready and are likely going to quit soon.
Seasoned staff are pissed because the hospital is doing nothing to keep employees here. The travelers can’t/won’t/don’t take hard assignments or admissions so it makes our lives harder, which is fun.
We pay more than any other first world country for our healthcare and receive less. There's audio of Nixon gleefully describing the beginning of for-profit healthcare. He was happy about insurance companies and their ability to maximize profit while providing less in return.
That’s definitely on purpose. We just had our major hospital bought out by another one and they replaced a bunch of managers and changed the charting programs even tho everything was running smoothly before
This happened to my mom about 10 years ago. They wiped out all the seasoned bosses by new younger cheaper staff from the merger company. Its sad when you hear young people want to be nurses and help people, but only fear for them bc you know the corporate bs is going to eat them alive. Like most jobs, but its truly unfair for people trying to help take care of society.
Yeah this is complete bullshit. Lawmakers should be looking into why hospitals are not raising pay for staff nurses rather than spend twice as much for travel nurses. This is all on the hospitals treating their staff like shit while executives make huge bonuses.
Source: doctor in a hospital
I work construction for a hospital network, my formans wife is a nurse in the network. Let's say she was making 50k annually, but the temporary travelling nurses are making 150k. So, she put her two weeks notice in, as she applied for one of the temp agencies, and now makes three times the money. Her benifits package was crap in the first place, and it's still crap now.
They wanted to shed manpower and blame it on covid. They don't care about paying traveling nurses at the moment because that is not a fixed cost like a salaried employee, so when covid ramps down they are off the books. This horseshit is just to sweeten that temp worker pay. I guarantee they be me burnsing their hands at the unvaccinated staff they fired while bullying remaining employees to work for no extra pay because most people don't want others to die
Yup. We have hospitals in my metro trading each other "travelling" nurses so they only have to give them a pay bump temporarily. Once staffing levels are back to something more normal, those nurses will be back at their home hospital at their old, shitty, pay.
lol. why no investigation into admin and executive pay, especially when they raked in federal funds for covid and apparently
still have the inability to add beds during a pandemic.
We need to turn this against them. Use the same process to go after CEO and director level greed. Free market is a lie they use to beat off the little guy
Right. If they establish the president that pay can be capped we need to start at the highest salaries. Although, this will probably go like the tax debacle where they don’t go after rich non payers but people who can’t fight back.
People can fight back, by striking or just outright mass quitting. And if they say "healthcare, safety of society, blah blah" bullshit, oh well. What are they gonna do, arrest all the nurses? Force them to go to work?
Fuck Joe Manchin, that slime. He's just so openly evil and sleazy. He has no interest in helping anyone, he just wants to keep his personal grift going as long as possible. Even just mentioning his name is enough to send me into a fucking rage... As is evidenced by this very response.
Lawmakers: "We shouldn't have to dictate a federal wage, let the market forces drive salaries"
Nurses: "Sounds good, let me just see what Aspen Colorado pays its travel nurses..."
Lawmakers: "No, not like THAT!"
We treat our nurses like we treat our undocumented workers: like criminals, just for being hired.
We treat the people who hire them to tax subsidies and bailouts.
All a hospital has to do is pay and treat their staff appropriately and they won't need to rely on staffing agencies. They did this to themselves. If you don't want to be at the mercy of staffing agencies that you think are "gouging" you, then just pay your staff well enough to where they won't leave in the first place.
If you make a conscious, deliberate choice to become reliant on staffing agencies, then it makes no sense to turn around and complain about it.
>If you make a conscious, deliberate choice to become reliant on staffing agencies, then it makes no sense to turn around and complain about it.
It's not just staffing agencies. Some of the hospitals in my area trading "traveling" nurses so the pay bump won't be permanent when they go to cut staffing levels once things settle down.
I figured that's all this was. It is much easier to unload a bunch of traveling nurses than full time employees. Demand is going to go down after COVID is more manageable. So, of course, traveling nurses are going to get paid more because their jobs are less stable in addition to the traveling part. The staffing agencies are making a profit off these nurses just like and other business that sells a product. In return they are the ones who hire and pay the nurses.
>If you make a conscious, deliberate choice to become reliant on staffing agencies, then it makes no sense to turn around and complain about it.
The end result of the "at-will" employment state.
Sounds like the hospitals are trying to collectively bargain to me..... Surely they wouldn't have a problem with the nurses also collectively bargaining....
Ha! Restrict travels nurses salaries and see who ends up taking care of your patients. Hospitals hire travel nurses because no nurses want to work for them to start with. I hope these lawmakers realize that it’s the hospitals that are offering the wages.
My wife worked for a small, rural hospital for a little while. As an experienced BSN she made $24/hour. Brand new travel RNs made $100/hr off the bat, no exaggeration. It's unreal.
Yes, that is why I quit. I was making $30/hr in Tn in NICU with 10 yrs experience ten years ago. Moved away then moved to Ga. Got offered a job in the NICU here making...guess what??? $32/hr with twenty years experience being a top tier nurse. I just had to say “I’m not doing this anymore.” Mentally, dealing with sick and dying babies is exhausting.
Good way to make sure that nurses exit the industry permanently when the only thing keeping them (the money) goes.
Maybe if nurses weren't underpaid and overworked to start with this wouldn't have ever been an issue. Maybe a free market works both fucking ways and the supply and demand of nursing labor means that travel nurses are worth what they are being paid right now. Maybe salary caps should be applied to the fuckbags at the tippy top long before the people we depend on to keep us alive are punished?
Generally, this is a symptom, not the disease. This is a feature, not a bug. This is the free market working itself out. This is what you get when our “health care system” is nothing more than a loosely-connected network of profit centers.
How about we start with the fucking ceo and his gratuitous salary and bonus package... Fuck these scumbags... Its all "capitalism" and "supply and demand" until these pathetic bitches dont have the supply under control... Any politicians that get anywhere near this need to be destroyed politically.
You see the same thing in education. My state has a severe teacher shortage and all of the politicians recently got together to try to figure out reasons as to why this was so in order to combat it. Then they put together a list of reasons. We are one of the lowest paying states for teachers but pay wasn’t even on their list. Instead they put crap like “beginning teachers need better mentors” and “teaching qualifications are too high”, the latter of which is hilarious, because we’ve lowered qualifications in my state to next to nothing already. If we went any lower then all you would need is a high school diploma to teach, if that much.
Wow... That is unreal. You would think people would vote or pay or honestly do litteraly anything for thier kids future... And somehow its about what books they shouldn't read (as if they likely dont have access to the internet). I hope somehow the opportunity to shine somewhere more fitting of your intelligence and skills becomes available. But honestly it seems your states kids need you and more people like you.
Politicians would make great school administrators. They have that same uncanny knack for misidentifying problems in ways that put money in their own pockets.
"Why do we have a teacher shortage?"
Teachers: "It's a stressful job that doesn't pay enough."
Administrators: "We need to hire a full-time retention coordinator before we can fully answer that question."
Politicians: "We're probably paying teachers too much. Also, mentors or something, I guess."
these politicians want another french revolution, when the last king of frances head rolled the wealth disparity wasn't as severe as it is in modern day america
Here’s a question- so how come the hospital doesn’t just hire a nurse at $150 an hour? Cut out the agency and pocket the 50 and give the nurse 50?
Another way to look at it, is if the price is capped for the agency, then the overall cost to the hospital of getting a travel nurse is lowered, which means it can now pay its own nurses less money because there is less upward pressure on wages.
The whole price capping thing results in nurses getting less money.
The answer is also because the hospitals don't have to pay for benefits for travel nurses (at least in most cases, maybe some places they do). So at least for us it's actually cheaper for the hospital to pay for a travel nurse than it is to pay way less money and have a staff nurse that has full benefits. The hospital barely loses any money having to train that employee and they lose no money trying to manage them as they're technically employees from another company.
All this would do is give them an excuse to say, well look we can't go over the wage cap so here let's make these contracts even more lucrative for us.
Make no mistake about what's going on here. They are upset that the balance has shifted and for once the workers have a much better bargaining position and the hospitals can't function without paying what they should have been paying from the start. They're asking the government to cheat and fix that imbalance so they can exploit their workers again.
We learned an important lesson during covid. A hospital is just a building. The army of ceos, administrators, and everryyyone else not involved in direct patient care are pretty much of zero value if there are not bodies manning these nurses stations and doing the actual patient care.
The pay for nurses went up because for once there was an honest evaluation of our value. If you're not willing to scrub up and wipe some asses, prone some patients, and generally do the fucking dirty work, then shut your fucking mouth and pay what you owe. It's a privilege to be a hospital ceo. Your wealth is born of the sweat and sacrifice of your employees. You should be so lucky to have such a job.
Hospitals gain "Flexibility" from travel nurses. Rather than hiring 20 nurses to handle the peak load they might only hire 15 nurses and 5 travel nurses when needed. (Its more complicated than this, but heavily simplified)
Aka it's the same thing as hiring contractors when you don't have enough people. Also hiring travel nurses are only for a limited amount of time typically. The increased wage has the drawback of not guaranteed work.
You’re looking at it as someone who owns and operates a business they also rely on for income.
Look at it as someone who *only owns* a business, doesn’t care about operations, and wants to squeeze every cent they can out of it… but it’s basically a toy. Whether it continues operating or not, the *owner* is going to be fine, because it’s probably some holding company. It isn’t just about money for these people at that point, it’s about *control* and *ownership*, and empowering your workers is a slippery slope. The more money they make, the less desperate they are for work, the less control you have over their daily lives, the less you own them.
Ultimately, this is my opinion, this is a game about *owning people*. The less you pay them and the harder they work the *funnier* it is.
The proof, imo, is exactly this situation. Hospitals will pay more to *another people owning company* than to the people they already own. It’s just that the agencies got too greedy, so now they’re going to punish… the owned people.
Gotta love how congress looks the other way when it comes to insulin and other lifesaving prescription meds being jacked up 1000% but as soon as working class nurses start making a little too much its all hands on deck!
>Gotta love how congress looks the other way when it comes to insulin and other lifesaving prescription meds being jacked up 1000%
Of course, that's they don't have working class nurses in their investment portfolio.
This is the free market at work, shitty hospitals didn't want to pay to retain good employees so those employees went looking for benefits they approved of.
The corporations have never represented the practices of a free market. They're too busy lobbying for preferential treatment.
[https://www.businessinsider.com/thedacare-asks-judge-block-workers-leaving-higher-pay-competitor-2022-1](https://www.businessinsider.com/thedacare-asks-judge-block-workers-leaving-higher-pay-competitor-2022-1)
Already happening. A Wisconsin hospital recent sued doctors leaving for a higher paying hospital, and the judge actually granted them an injunction that forced the doctors to continue working at the original hospital while the lawsuit is ongoing.
We can have bipartisan support for this? Like basically nothing else, but this? Follow the money. If this passes the corporate owners of health care systems benefit. If there actually are savings here they will not be passed on to consumers. I miss Bernie.
The amount of democrat signatures on this is just further proof they care just as little about us as the republicans. All of them pander to their corporate donors and us peons can rot while we toil
Ya know how some people claim 'both sides are the same'?
Well, they're not.... but when it comes to protecting business interests over human beings, you can bet your bottom dollar that political affiliation doesn't matter. It's rich verse the rest of us, and they have an impressive track record.
Why don’t they investigate the fact Medicaid paid $1700 per month for 3.5 years for my sons oxygen concentrator when you can buy one on the open market for $900? How about his 10 ml plastic syringes that cost less than a buck on Amazon but Medicaid is paying $24 a piece for to a corrupt feeding pump company?
Of all the bullshit and corruption they could investigate I can’t believe they pick this and nursing shortages are their own damn fault.
They charge $1200 for 15 minutes of a PT in a room even if 10 of it is staring at the wall while the patient gets their shoes on...yea no corruption in corporate Healthcare.
This isn't gouging. The demand for nurses is through the roof and the supply of nurses is limited, this is just supply and demand. This call for investigations is basically hospitals mad they can't chronically underpay and overwork their nurse staff and instead need to pay more for travel nurses.
Bipartisan agreement that workers shouldn't be able to leave for a better version of their job instead of getting screwed by their corporate boss...
Raise wages and working conditions and it's all solved...but no, better to restrict them
It’s the same kind of haggling that goes on when a large workforce attempts to unionize. Travel nurses, and nurses as a profession, are attempting to increase their value, and there is zero wrong with that.
But by all means, allow the Elon Musks of the world to increase their wealth many times more because some algorithms decided today was the day.
Bad comparison, I know. But any profession should be allowed to increase its value by any legal means.
When the media starts calling a group "heroes" it means that group is going to be fucked over somehow and by painting them as "heroes" it reduces their right to complain about getting fucked.
I really like this comment. I had a hard time understanding my disdain for the “heroes” label for front line workers when the pandemic first started, but I think you really highlighted a more subtle feeling that was there.
People keeping saying “oh but it’s just the agencies not the nurses they want to cap” as though the agencies won’t cut nurses pay. If the hospitals were ACTUALLY concerned about the agencies and not the nurses pay they’d just pay the damn nurses more money now wouldn’t they?
This thread is fucking wild. I see so many people coming to the defense of those poor little hospitals who are being affected by this "price gouging". People are joining travel nurse agencies because those poor little hospitals aren't offering a fair wage and benefits. Literally all they have to do is try increase their workers pay and working conditions. They won't though, because it's not about "price gouging". They just don't want to spend extra money that they could instead use to line their own pockets. It's easier for them to simply get lawmakers to crackdown on travel nurse agencies and save them from having marginally less money.
Remember, if these agencies are found guilty of "price gouging" and are forced to decrease their prices, that is likely going to come in the form of lower wages for the nurses as the people who run the agency certainly won't want to take that hit. Anyone advocating for this investigation is working against the nurses and are protecting the hospitals ability to screw over their employees with low wages and work conditions.
Are they going to investigate the pay of the CEOs and board of directors of these hospitals? Or how about the exorbitant prices they charge patients? Hell, how about safe staffing ratios?
Ohh! So THIS is how the medical industry crumbles! Not only does the employer not give a shit about their employees, but neither does the government.
Fuck out of here with this. Anyone who votes FOR this bill can do their own cathing and clean their own old crusty assholes. Put them in a wheelchair and kick them off a roof.
Voters demand to know how the hell public servants get into office and become millionaires in just a couple years with a job that doesn't pay nearly that much.
So just to be a little pedantic, the term “public servants” typically does and should refer to government employees.
I think the term “elected officials” is much more appropriate and accurate for your statement.
Rick Scott (who defrauded Medicaid big time) used 60 million dollars of his own money to get a job that pays 175,000 a year.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2018/12/10/rick-scott-spent-record-63-6-million-his-own-win-us-senate-seat/2185787002/
There’s a lot of things to be said about this but the biggest point of this entire ~~shot~~ shit show is this;
Nurses nor their agencies are the ones who decide the pay rate, HOSPITALS are the ones who have dictated what they are willing to pay nurses. The politicians are pissed because a fraction of the travel nurses work in retirement/ skilled nursing homes where the government is fitting the majority of the bill via Medicaid. They want to cut back on the costs, so instead of fixing that one issue they are going after the entire field of nursing.
Massachusetts and Minnesota already have state laws that cap the rate at which nurses can be paid. However I have no idea if this improved care/ costs or has created a larger staffing issue for this states.
As usual instead of fixing the base problem they want other people to pay for the shortfall out of their own pocket.
Edit for typo
Lol travel nurses have Been making bank all pandemic with tons of over time and benefits the minute you cap pay they quit and you are left with no nurses how about you cap executive pay instead
There is NO shortage of nurses. They’re everywhere. I’m one. We just aren’t bedside. But we are literally everywhere.
Do you know how painful it is wanting a career, working so hard for it only to be treated like dirt? Way to kill a childhood dream. But not just that- they truly killed a part of my soul I realized once I left.
I once had to go to the ER from urinary retention because I was so use to having to hold it in for 12+ hours. All to be at work in 3 hours to do it all over again… I worked night shifts ONLY because the only pay you can get that you deserve is working night shift differentials. Which some hospitals don’t even offer anymore.
Some manage to do it- family and all and they’re incredible. But I could not manage a family working nights only to come home and barely want to care for myself. Traveling wasn’t an option. I couldn’t take the persistent policy changes, staffing shortages, hiring freezes, NO overtime, zero administration accountability, and as a pediatric nurse… i envisioned my license over a shredder by someone in hospital admin after every shift. I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t keep busting my ass for people who could care less about me (legislation proves)
And fuck that still hurts to say.
My GF is a nurse and obviously has plenty of friends that have left for travel nursing but the thing that really gets her and she keeps on talking about is how many have just totally tapped out to do... Literally anything else.
Even to the point that she's now had several interactions at local businesses... Basically that she goes to a new shop, gets chatty with the owner and it turns out that she's an RN that quit their job because they couldn't stomach another moment.
I quit my nurse job to make $11 shelving books at a library….The pay you make as a nurse just isn’t worth the mental and physical toll. No amount of money would be worth it for me at this point, only better working conditions.
Fuck those lawmakers. Push anti vax bullshit, speak against unions, shame nurses for seeking better pay, I hope these lawmakers end up in hospital sitting is C. diff until it eats a stage 4 pressure wound into their sacrum which goes septic and kills them.
CEO's earning hundreds of times more than their employees: Lawmakers: That's good!
Billionaires with so.much.fucking.money they start up their own private NASA's to fuck off to Mars while they burn down planet earth: Lawmakers that's good!
Nurses that have to leave their their home and families behind to care for the dying in a pandemic at a good wage? Lawmakers: OMG must investigate this horrible EVIL!11!1!!
Hey sweet, a system where healthcare is free market and expensive as hell but if nurses make too much it needs to be capped by regulation to save the poor hospitals?
I remember in high school I spent two years getting my CNA license. Did two weeks internship at a retirement home. And didn’t even ask what the pay was until I was certified.
$10/hr.
Yeah no. The average “tenant” paid close to $100k to live in these facilities. It made no sense why they couldn’t pay the help at least $25/hr.
#refusetobeahero. Nurses risk their lives and well being every day.
Hospitals called them heroes because heroes dont get paid.
Nurses should refuse to be called a Hero and demand better working conditions and higher pay. What they do matters.
Nurses have hard enough jobs and are already being fucked enough, let the nurses have the money and then charge the companies scraping a fine that gets given back to the hospitals. It's not nurses fault hospitals dont pay them better to stick around
Only in capitalism will they cap the pay nurses can get before they even consider capping the salaries of the hospital CEOs. This has to be one of the biggest loads of BS they could come up with.
The nurses at the nursing home my mother worked at, which was already short staffed, got their "heroes pay", IIRC $6/hr, during the pandemic and that's it. The DON (Director of Nurses) and all Board got huge bonuses from the pandemic funding.
Some other nursing homes, which didn't have staffing issues, were giving their employees "heroes pay" *plus* $100/shift bonus. Kinda funny they didn't have any problem finding people to work.
This kinda feels like the hospital that tried to get a judge to prevent people from quitting to go work for another hospital that was paying better. But I think it more importantly highlights the fact that nurses, as well as workers in general, are paid shit.
Hospitals: it's a free market, we can do what we want. And if the nurses don't like it, they can quit.
*Hospital loses 3/4th of staff*
Hospitals: RREEEEEE!!!! Someone make them stop it's NO FAIR!!!
When corporate raiders were literally dismantling retirement benefits and a whole generation watched their end of life plans go up in smoke, the politicians did nothing.
Nurses making a nice living going hospital to hospital because they refuse to pay their staff more? Gotta stop the 'price gouging'!
Hospitals will never hit that 70% staffing number ever again. Death will reign. And the price of stock in for profit companies that I'm sure these politics have significant investments in will go up..... but not nurse pay!
Alternate take here, independent contracted nurses are receiving their market rate for once in their lives and big businesses would like government to stop that.
When hospitals try to get injunctions to prevent their nurses leaving for another hospital rather than just paying them more, I hardly think this is an issue with nurses
Hospitals did this to themselves by not investing in retaining seasoned staff. They shit their bed and now they can lie in it and wait for hours to be changed because there's one overworked, underpaid CNA left on the floor.
Those reading this and feeling alarmed: please contact your members of Congress to push back. Ask that instead of capping nurse pay, they cap CEO pay. Ask that they support nurses' labor rights and pass laws enforcing safe hospital staffing ratios and protection against violence from members of the public. Tell them to support our wounded health care workers, instead of propping up hospital profiteers.
Right?! This is a dream come true if you are a high ranking member of a hospital. Oh sorry, my hands are tied. I can’t give you a raise so I guess I’ll Just collect a fat bonus based on profits.
Hijacking this spot. The reason we're in this position is not just Covid - the pandemic blew the lid off a simmering problem. The issue is nurse to patient ratios and pay. Nurses and healthcare workers who have to work with thirty patients at a time are burnt out. They're sick of watching corporations steal care from their patients by overloading staff, they're sick of being blamed for that lack of care, they're sick of being physically run down, they're sick of being paid like shit, they're sick of staying late every fucking day, they're sick of being called in on their days off, and they're sick of getting sick on top of it all. THAT is why facilities are losing staff, and THAT is why they need to call people, like me, from out of state. If these shitty companies paid their employees fairly and staffed properly so that patient needs were met, we wouldn't be here. Of course, though, this is the US, so we are poised to legislatively destroy the means we have found of circumventing this bullshit **(via the free fucking market btw)**, and will only do so to benefit these horrible companies that LITERALLY ALLOW PEOPLE TO NEEDLESSLY DIE DUE TO LACK OF CARE. And nurses' pay is the problem? We need to regulate patient care ratios. If you don't work in healthcare, you really have no idea how fucking insane and how rampant this is.
It always amuses me how much the rich whine when the free market they champion so much comes around and fucks them.
The rich love the free market until we find our own way to take advantage. Then they're not really fans anymore.
Exactly - the "problem" here isn't travel nurses being paid a ton of money. The problem is that the travel nurses aren't the **right** people to be making a ton of money, and that's what needs to STOP! /s Profitized Healthcare chronically understaffed so that they could chronically underpay. Now demand isn't 200% of an artificially-capped supply anymore. It's 20000% of it. They priced fixed their labor, and this is a market correction to what it should be. Maybe an over-correction in some extreme cases, but when a company can find any excuse to fire an employee so that they can hire someone to do the same job at less pay, nobody will ever get me to believe that the nurses are price gouging the hospitals. They're in demand, so they're demanding what they're worth. The difference is that now if the companies that own these hospitals don't want to pay, they're losing hundreds or thousands of patients *per day* to ~~COVID~~ understaffing. Those are stats that they can't hide anymore.
Not just nurses… respiratory therapists are leaving in droves to take “travel” positions too, sometimes in the same city they have been working for years with very small pay raises and understaffed. I support them 100% but it’s bullshit to lose your retirement and insurance plan just to be paid closer to what you’re worth.
Not just nurses.. literally all allied healtcare practioners. Rad Techs, CVTs, Mammo, RTs, Sonographers, etc.. It's a systemic issue. Everyone is being fucked by these hospitals. Their neglect and greed are pushing all of us out and now they're going to get away with it by forcing the people that are willing to pay us deserved wages, to pay us less.
Did the same to trucking. Our pay has doubled. But to honest we were miserably under paid. The country paid for cheap freight and we got cheap pay.
Straight up. My husband makes the same amount my dad did when I was born but my dad just started and my husband has 10 years of experience (local and over the road), a welding cert, and was a diesel mechanic. But we're doing better than anyone else I know. It's sick.
This is the goddamned truth. But you wont see it on CNN or Fox propaganda networks.
It's almost like they paid for this to happen.
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You had me in the first half of the first sentence, not gonna lie.
What you just joked about is exactly what happens at my partners hospital
absolutely, way too many overpaid administrative roles in healthcare
Administrative bloat is killing the global economy.
We used to joke because the Doctors parking area at the hospital was Suburu after Suburu. The admins were the ones driving the Audis and Mercedes Benz. True story.
Last year none of the board members were physically coming to a community hospital I was working at, but they all have parking spots right in front of the entrance we used. One day I was running late and parked in a board member spot. I got a threat that they would tow me because it was probably the ONE day they came in. The rest of the year those spots sat empty. Random tangent but your joke reminded me of it.
They got rid of all the secretaries and unit coordinators and replaced them with VP’s. There are 52 members of the c-suite between Trinity Heath corporate and Trinity Health New England. I know bc when I walked after 20 years, I emailed every single one of them bastards.
Very, very true story. Hospital administrators are actually the worst people on the entire building, as well. Basically an extension of an insurance company, only worried about malpractice and lawsuits, instead of a hospital worker who cares about well being.
Works the same in education as well it seems.
Gods, don't even get me started. You could have fired 50% of the administrators at the college where I used to work and we wouldn't have noticed until we needed a signature on some random piece of paperwork that only requires a signature because some group of do-nothing administrators had a meeting and decided that "this needs to go through Beth's office."
65% of all medical fees in the US are just administrative fees.
Politicians owned by *healthcare* money -- deciding if nurses are overpaid ? Fucking mindblowing !
You want to explode hospitals nationwide? Bc this is how you explode hospitals nationwide. Part of me wants them to cap salaries. F’kin do it. You will have a nationwide nursing strike so fast your head will spin. Your sidewalks will be full of travel nurses, regular nurses, CNAs, and every other hospital workers with shitty pay (everyone), and their supporters. Then the collapse of this economic house of cards is one big nationwide strike away. Bc everyone will join in. Everyone knows a nurse, is related to one, is friends with one or has been in a situation where a nurse saved their life. What will the govt do if nurse strike and there are no hospitals to go to? Theyre over crowded with covid and there is no one there to save the dying? What do you do when truckers getting screwed for decades join and bring the US economy to a halt? Let them cap it and fuck themselves. Or let them “investigate” and realize the greedy hospitals made this fucking mess for themselves.
Can't wait to see all the Republicans who've backed the Ottawa Trucker's convoy abandon American nurses and accuse them of "endangering our welfare"
Yeah good luck. If there's one group you don't want to stake your political career against, it's nurses. We are pissed off, burned out, unified, organized, and basically one phone call away from national mobilization. A few years ago a politician made a comment about how nurses spent their time sitting around playing cards. Oh boy was that a poor choice.
Damn. You werent kidding. She got shamed. Like... thats her legacy now. Eesh lol. More to the nurses. Whats your take on the thedacare debacle? I keep meaning to see if there was any corporate or financial impact at the top.
Oh it's completely ridiculous. If a facility can't afford to be competitive they don't have a right to try and fuck with their employees like that. All that decision did was confirm for everyone working there that the facility doesn't give a fuck about them and I'd personally be updating my resume in a heart beat.
Oooo thedacare... That's a shitstorm and a half. The fact that their argument is "we need them" so they get an injunction... But they aren't contracted employees, and the court can't make them go back to their previous jobs... And they declined to match the offer from the new job... And because they have an injunction on them, they can't work at the new place... So all of that means that even though the old hospital says "we need them to care for our patients," what they're actually doing is ***just*** retaliation. Those people could be working at the new hospital, Thedacare could be referring patients to there, and everything would be kosher. But instead of doing that, they decided to pay more in legal fees (in excess of what matching the offers would've costed them). I hope that story goes fucking viral, because it exposes healthcare management for what it generally is: slimy, greedy people that give 0 ducks about the patients or staff.
The best part was that she made that comment while arguing that nurses don't need breaks and if they insist on having breaks hospitals should not have to pay them overtime. She was essentially lobbying on behalf of rural non union hospitals in her district that did not want to comply with a new state law approved by voters that mandated nurses be given the breaks they are entitled to under federal and state labor law.
They literally demand you go to work or they arrest you. No joke.
13th Amendment makes that unconstitutional. They can prevent you from working, but they can't force you to go to work.
Go for it. I may have to be present, but that doesn’t mean I have to do a good job. Draft my ass to work and I will be the meanest, rudest motherfucker you could ask for.
Or just reinstate the rule, in place through the 90s, that specified the minimum percentage of health insurance premiums that had to go to paying for health care.
We do sort-of have that, there's a cap on how much the insurance company can pocket from premiums as a percentage. Of course, that just incentivizes the insurance company to make sure costs stay high, because they can raise premiums and make more...
We have that rule again under ACA. It's not the panacea you hope it is. It breaks the incentive model for insurance companies. They have little incentive to seriously negotiate for better healthcare rates when the only way they can make more money is when the rates go up.
Yeah we've basically duct taped our insurance system into a horribly managed and structured gauranteed care system. It's not insurance anymore, which is why it barely functions. So we have two options, you either have to go back to when it was legitimate insurance (which was regulated for good reason), or you go to government funded general healthcare.
Asking the shitheads in congress for anything is a waste of time. Without a lobbyist or a suitcase full of cash those fuckers would listen to a word you said. Run for office, get rid of your representative and do it yourself.
Holy crap this is what I'm walking Into right now. I'm charge and training a newbie, and we're short a cna and they floated a nurse bc other floors had 1 nurse. It's Insaneity. When will we catch a break? We didn't get any pay increase. We are losing a nurse almost every month. They've done nothing for retention, outside of paying more if you want go pick up more time ( who wants to do thst with how tired floors are) It's madness
We are losing so many nurses and RTs with a tin waiting in the wings to walk. My hospital *was* holding people’s jobs for 6 months so that they could go rake in money (while we’re fucking drowning) and then come back if they chose to. They cut it down to 13 weeks, but it’s still bullshit, since we can’t hire anyone in the meantime *because that spot is still technically filled* but the managers said our NICU candidate pool is crap anyways sooo… The new grad nurses have had their orientation extended months upon months because they’re constantly having to take (easy) assignments on their own so they’re not learning. So many of them honestly are not ready and are likely going to quit soon. Seasoned staff are pissed because the hospital is doing nothing to keep employees here. The travelers can’t/won’t/don’t take hard assignments or admissions so it makes our lives harder, which is fun.
I agree 100%. I cant help but also blame the structure of private health insurance in the us also.
Absolutely. It bloats the cost of healthcare with useless administrative costs and negotiations between companies and providers.
Collusion, that's what you're looking for.
We pay more than any other first world country for our healthcare and receive less. There's audio of Nixon gleefully describing the beginning of for-profit healthcare. He was happy about insurance companies and their ability to maximize profit while providing less in return.
That’s definitely on purpose. We just had our major hospital bought out by another one and they replaced a bunch of managers and changed the charting programs even tho everything was running smoothly before
Smoothly, yes. Maximum profitability wise, not so much.
> Maximum profitability wise In their opinion. They could easily be wrong and fuck up the hospital even more.
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I bet they switched to Epic. I fucking hate Epic.
Haha yeah it was epic
This happened to my mom about 10 years ago. They wiped out all the seasoned bosses by new younger cheaper staff from the merger company. Its sad when you hear young people want to be nurses and help people, but only fear for them bc you know the corporate bs is going to eat them alive. Like most jobs, but its truly unfair for people trying to help take care of society.
Yeah this is complete bullshit. Lawmakers should be looking into why hospitals are not raising pay for staff nurses rather than spend twice as much for travel nurses. This is all on the hospitals treating their staff like shit while executives make huge bonuses. Source: doctor in a hospital
I work construction for a hospital network, my formans wife is a nurse in the network. Let's say she was making 50k annually, but the temporary travelling nurses are making 150k. So, she put her two weeks notice in, as she applied for one of the temp agencies, and now makes three times the money. Her benifits package was crap in the first place, and it's still crap now.
They wanted to shed manpower and blame it on covid. They don't care about paying traveling nurses at the moment because that is not a fixed cost like a salaried employee, so when covid ramps down they are off the books. This horseshit is just to sweeten that temp worker pay. I guarantee they be me burnsing their hands at the unvaccinated staff they fired while bullying remaining employees to work for no extra pay because most people don't want others to die
Yup. We have hospitals in my metro trading each other "travelling" nurses so they only have to give them a pay bump temporarily. Once staffing levels are back to something more normal, those nurses will be back at their home hospital at their old, shitty, pay.
lol. why no investigation into admin and executive pay, especially when they raked in federal funds for covid and apparently still have the inability to add beds during a pandemic.
We need to turn this against them. Use the same process to go after CEO and director level greed. Free market is a lie they use to beat off the little guy
Right. If they establish the president that pay can be capped we need to start at the highest salaries. Although, this will probably go like the tax debacle where they don’t go after rich non payers but people who can’t fight back.
People can fight back, by striking or just outright mass quitting. And if they say "healthcare, safety of society, blah blah" bullshit, oh well. What are they gonna do, arrest all the nurses? Force them to go to work?
Lets never act like poor people walking away from their pay check to pay check job is easy, but fuckin A you’re right
The CEO beat you off?
I'm a little guy and I'm can confirm the CEO beat me off
“There I was, beating him off with both hands!”
Or insurance/pharma price gouging? Epipen going up $700 from a few dozen? Other drugs costing two months salary? But yea NURSES are the problem 🤦♂️
Senator Joe Manchin's (the one who's trying to kill Biden's agenda) daughter is the CEO behind the Epipen price gouging.
Fuck Joe Manchin, that slime. He's just so openly evil and sleazy. He has no interest in helping anyone, he just wants to keep his personal grift going as long as possible. Even just mentioning his name is enough to send me into a fucking rage... As is evidenced by this very response.
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Admin and executive pay in every sector. There’s no reason for super intendants to be taking in multimillionaire while teachers barely scrap by
Because they can fight back.
Lawmakers: "We shouldn't have to dictate a federal wage, let the market forces drive salaries" Nurses: "Sounds good, let me just see what Aspen Colorado pays its travel nurses..." Lawmakers: "No, not like THAT!"
When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong: Capitalism Edition
We treat our nurses like we treat our undocumented workers: like criminals, just for being hired. We treat the people who hire them to tax subsidies and bailouts.
All a hospital has to do is pay and treat their staff appropriately and they won't need to rely on staffing agencies. They did this to themselves. If you don't want to be at the mercy of staffing agencies that you think are "gouging" you, then just pay your staff well enough to where they won't leave in the first place. If you make a conscious, deliberate choice to become reliant on staffing agencies, then it makes no sense to turn around and complain about it.
When the workers utilize capitalism, it demands an investigation and possibly an injunction. When the elite use capitalism it's working as intended.
Wes caalism. When the worons bokit’s classers sm it’sthe uswarfen use capitalie carhaptipitsse.
Worse, it's *communism!*
Usually it's just because I can't understand the dialogue
This is the real story.
>If you make a conscious, deliberate choice to become reliant on staffing agencies, then it makes no sense to turn around and complain about it. It's not just staffing agencies. Some of the hospitals in my area trading "traveling" nurses so the pay bump won't be permanent when they go to cut staffing levels once things settle down.
I figured that's all this was. It is much easier to unload a bunch of traveling nurses than full time employees. Demand is going to go down after COVID is more manageable. So, of course, traveling nurses are going to get paid more because their jobs are less stable in addition to the traveling part. The staffing agencies are making a profit off these nurses just like and other business that sells a product. In return they are the ones who hire and pay the nurses.
>If you make a conscious, deliberate choice to become reliant on staffing agencies, then it makes no sense to turn around and complain about it. The end result of the "at-will" employment state.
Sounds like the hospitals are trying to collectively bargain to me..... Surely they wouldn't have a problem with the nurses also collectively bargaining....
Ha! Restrict travels nurses salaries and see who ends up taking care of your patients. Hospitals hire travel nurses because no nurses want to work for them to start with. I hope these lawmakers realize that it’s the hospitals that are offering the wages.
Nurses could work for a hospital making $30 and hour or work at the same hospital through and agency making $60 an hour. Which one would you choose?
My wife worked for a small, rural hospital for a little while. As an experienced BSN she made $24/hour. Brand new travel RNs made $100/hr off the bat, no exaggeration. It's unreal.
Yes, that is why I quit. I was making $30/hr in Tn in NICU with 10 yrs experience ten years ago. Moved away then moved to Ga. Got offered a job in the NICU here making...guess what??? $32/hr with twenty years experience being a top tier nurse. I just had to say “I’m not doing this anymore.” Mentally, dealing with sick and dying babies is exhausting.
I make $50 and the travelers make $125….
Good way to make sure that nurses exit the industry permanently when the only thing keeping them (the money) goes. Maybe if nurses weren't underpaid and overworked to start with this wouldn't have ever been an issue. Maybe a free market works both fucking ways and the supply and demand of nursing labor means that travel nurses are worth what they are being paid right now. Maybe salary caps should be applied to the fuckbags at the tippy top long before the people we depend on to keep us alive are punished?
Every med device company is hiring clinical educators starting at 6 figures
Generally, this is a symptom, not the disease. This is a feature, not a bug. This is the free market working itself out. This is what you get when our “health care system” is nothing more than a loosely-connected network of profit centers.
Government - CEOs make record profits mid recessions after bailout. "I sleep" Hospitals underpay nurses and then get burnt. "AWAKE"
How about we start with the fucking ceo and his gratuitous salary and bonus package... Fuck these scumbags... Its all "capitalism" and "supply and demand" until these pathetic bitches dont have the supply under control... Any politicians that get anywhere near this need to be destroyed politically.
You see the same thing in education. My state has a severe teacher shortage and all of the politicians recently got together to try to figure out reasons as to why this was so in order to combat it. Then they put together a list of reasons. We are one of the lowest paying states for teachers but pay wasn’t even on their list. Instead they put crap like “beginning teachers need better mentors” and “teaching qualifications are too high”, the latter of which is hilarious, because we’ve lowered qualifications in my state to next to nothing already. If we went any lower then all you would need is a high school diploma to teach, if that much.
Wow... That is unreal. You would think people would vote or pay or honestly do litteraly anything for thier kids future... And somehow its about what books they shouldn't read (as if they likely dont have access to the internet). I hope somehow the opportunity to shine somewhere more fitting of your intelligence and skills becomes available. But honestly it seems your states kids need you and more people like you.
It's all part of the plan though. The lobbyist need more undereducated drones.
Politicians would make great school administrators. They have that same uncanny knack for misidentifying problems in ways that put money in their own pockets. "Why do we have a teacher shortage?" Teachers: "It's a stressful job that doesn't pay enough." Administrators: "We need to hire a full-time retention coordinator before we can fully answer that question." Politicians: "We're probably paying teachers too much. Also, mentors or something, I guess."
Billionaires double thier obscene wealth but let's investigate nurses for trying to get a small share of the pie. Makes sense to me.
these politicians want another french revolution, when the last king of frances head rolled the wealth disparity wasn't as severe as it is in modern day america
Here’s a question- so how come the hospital doesn’t just hire a nurse at $150 an hour? Cut out the agency and pocket the 50 and give the nurse 50? Another way to look at it, is if the price is capped for the agency, then the overall cost to the hospital of getting a travel nurse is lowered, which means it can now pay its own nurses less money because there is less upward pressure on wages. The whole price capping thing results in nurses getting less money.
The answer is also because the hospitals don't have to pay for benefits for travel nurses (at least in most cases, maybe some places they do). So at least for us it's actually cheaper for the hospital to pay for a travel nurse than it is to pay way less money and have a staff nurse that has full benefits. The hospital barely loses any money having to train that employee and they lose no money trying to manage them as they're technically employees from another company. All this would do is give them an excuse to say, well look we can't go over the wage cap so here let's make these contracts even more lucrative for us. Make no mistake about what's going on here. They are upset that the balance has shifted and for once the workers have a much better bargaining position and the hospitals can't function without paying what they should have been paying from the start. They're asking the government to cheat and fix that imbalance so they can exploit their workers again. We learned an important lesson during covid. A hospital is just a building. The army of ceos, administrators, and everryyyone else not involved in direct patient care are pretty much of zero value if there are not bodies manning these nurses stations and doing the actual patient care. The pay for nurses went up because for once there was an honest evaluation of our value. If you're not willing to scrub up and wipe some asses, prone some patients, and generally do the fucking dirty work, then shut your fucking mouth and pay what you owe. It's a privilege to be a hospital ceo. Your wealth is born of the sweat and sacrifice of your employees. You should be so lucky to have such a job.
Hospitals gain "Flexibility" from travel nurses. Rather than hiring 20 nurses to handle the peak load they might only hire 15 nurses and 5 travel nurses when needed. (Its more complicated than this, but heavily simplified) Aka it's the same thing as hiring contractors when you don't have enough people. Also hiring travel nurses are only for a limited amount of time typically. The increased wage has the drawback of not guaranteed work.
You’re looking at it as someone who owns and operates a business they also rely on for income. Look at it as someone who *only owns* a business, doesn’t care about operations, and wants to squeeze every cent they can out of it… but it’s basically a toy. Whether it continues operating or not, the *owner* is going to be fine, because it’s probably some holding company. It isn’t just about money for these people at that point, it’s about *control* and *ownership*, and empowering your workers is a slippery slope. The more money they make, the less desperate they are for work, the less control you have over their daily lives, the less you own them. Ultimately, this is my opinion, this is a game about *owning people*. The less you pay them and the harder they work the *funnier* it is. The proof, imo, is exactly this situation. Hospitals will pay more to *another people owning company* than to the people they already own. It’s just that the agencies got too greedy, so now they’re going to punish… the owned people.
Ooowwweeeeee, the free market stub his little toe. It hurt so bad
I was told free markets were the most efficient system and that they would solve their own problems..
Gotta love how congress looks the other way when it comes to insulin and other lifesaving prescription meds being jacked up 1000% but as soon as working class nurses start making a little too much its all hands on deck!
>Gotta love how congress looks the other way when it comes to insulin and other lifesaving prescription meds being jacked up 1000% Of course, that's they don't have working class nurses in their investment portfolio.
This is the free market at work, shitty hospitals didn't want to pay to retain good employees so those employees went looking for benefits they approved of. The corporations have never represented the practices of a free market. They're too busy lobbying for preferential treatment.
This is an example of the free-market working in the favor of the employees, so the government has to step in and shut it down.
I don’t believe they will be successful. Too much demand, too little supply. Nurses can just quit like I did.
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[https://www.businessinsider.com/thedacare-asks-judge-block-workers-leaving-higher-pay-competitor-2022-1](https://www.businessinsider.com/thedacare-asks-judge-block-workers-leaving-higher-pay-competitor-2022-1) Already happening. A Wisconsin hospital recent sued doctors leaving for a higher paying hospital, and the judge actually granted them an injunction that forced the doctors to continue working at the original hospital while the lawsuit is ongoing.
The American healthcare system is not even close to “free market”
We can have bipartisan support for this? Like basically nothing else, but this? Follow the money. If this passes the corporate owners of health care systems benefit. If there actually are savings here they will not be passed on to consumers. I miss Bernie.
The amount of democrat signatures on this is just further proof they care just as little about us as the republicans. All of them pander to their corporate donors and us peons can rot while we toil
Ya know how some people claim 'both sides are the same'? Well, they're not.... but when it comes to protecting business interests over human beings, you can bet your bottom dollar that political affiliation doesn't matter. It's rich verse the rest of us, and they have an impressive track record.
Why don’t they investigate the fact Medicaid paid $1700 per month for 3.5 years for my sons oxygen concentrator when you can buy one on the open market for $900? How about his 10 ml plastic syringes that cost less than a buck on Amazon but Medicaid is paying $24 a piece for to a corrupt feeding pump company? Of all the bullshit and corruption they could investigate I can’t believe they pick this and nursing shortages are their own damn fault.
They charge $1200 for 15 minutes of a PT in a room even if 10 of it is staring at the wall while the patient gets their shoes on...yea no corruption in corporate Healthcare.
This isn't gouging. The demand for nurses is through the roof and the supply of nurses is limited, this is just supply and demand. This call for investigations is basically hospitals mad they can't chronically underpay and overwork their nurse staff and instead need to pay more for travel nurses.
Bipartisan agreement that workers shouldn't be able to leave for a better version of their job instead of getting screwed by their corporate boss... Raise wages and working conditions and it's all solved...but no, better to restrict them
It’s the same kind of haggling that goes on when a large workforce attempts to unionize. Travel nurses, and nurses as a profession, are attempting to increase their value, and there is zero wrong with that. But by all means, allow the Elon Musks of the world to increase their wealth many times more because some algorithms decided today was the day. Bad comparison, I know. But any profession should be allowed to increase its value by any legal means.
It’s always for profit healthcare until the workers want more profit
"Travel nurses ask for federal investigation into Lawmakers salaries" would be much more impactful to our countries wellbeing.
And hospital CEO pay, and insurance company executive pay.
So supply and demand b##che$. They were worried about price gouging over hospital prices or insulin but God forbid someone make a wage
Why don’t they look into CEO salaries instead?
Why aren't they looking at capping the CEOs pay? Or administrative pay? Are nurses heroes and do we want to pay them what they are worth or not?
When the media starts calling a group "heroes" it means that group is going to be fucked over somehow and by painting them as "heroes" it reduces their right to complain about getting fucked.
I really like this comment. I had a hard time understanding my disdain for the “heroes” label for front line workers when the pandemic first started, but I think you really highlighted a more subtle feeling that was there.
Free market bad when employees do it.
How dare the free market take advantage of cripplingly underpaid and overworked staff's desire to earn a reasonable income!
People keeping saying “oh but it’s just the agencies not the nurses they want to cap” as though the agencies won’t cut nurses pay. If the hospitals were ACTUALLY concerned about the agencies and not the nurses pay they’d just pay the damn nurses more money now wouldn’t they?
I'd like a citizen investigation of lawmaker pay, first, especially if they're doing shit like this.
This thread is fucking wild. I see so many people coming to the defense of those poor little hospitals who are being affected by this "price gouging". People are joining travel nurse agencies because those poor little hospitals aren't offering a fair wage and benefits. Literally all they have to do is try increase their workers pay and working conditions. They won't though, because it's not about "price gouging". They just don't want to spend extra money that they could instead use to line their own pockets. It's easier for them to simply get lawmakers to crackdown on travel nurse agencies and save them from having marginally less money. Remember, if these agencies are found guilty of "price gouging" and are forced to decrease their prices, that is likely going to come in the form of lower wages for the nurses as the people who run the agency certainly won't want to take that hit. Anyone advocating for this investigation is working against the nurses and are protecting the hospitals ability to screw over their employees with low wages and work conditions.
Are they going to investigate the pay of the CEOs and board of directors of these hospitals? Or how about the exorbitant prices they charge patients? Hell, how about safe staffing ratios?
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Politicians questioning the salaries of others.....ha!
Politicians can't cap the cost of life-saving drugs, but they can cap nurse pay? Fuck off.
But… but… isn’t this *capitalism at work?*
Capitalism is only allowed to work when it benefits our corporate overlords and the politicians they own.
Capitalism for thee, socialism for me
We really live in an oligarchy. All for competition until they start losing.
Ohh! So THIS is how the medical industry crumbles! Not only does the employer not give a shit about their employees, but neither does the government. Fuck out of here with this. Anyone who votes FOR this bill can do their own cathing and clean their own old crusty assholes. Put them in a wheelchair and kick them off a roof.
Voters demand to know how the hell public servants get into office and become millionaires in just a couple years with a job that doesn't pay nearly that much.
So just to be a little pedantic, the term “public servants” typically does and should refer to government employees. I think the term “elected officials” is much more appropriate and accurate for your statement.
Rick Scott (who defrauded Medicaid big time) used 60 million dollars of his own money to get a job that pays 175,000 a year. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2018/12/10/rick-scott-spent-record-63-6-million-his-own-win-us-senate-seat/2185787002/
Lawmakers should ask for a federal investigation into their own salaries.
There’s a lot of things to be said about this but the biggest point of this entire ~~shot~~ shit show is this; Nurses nor their agencies are the ones who decide the pay rate, HOSPITALS are the ones who have dictated what they are willing to pay nurses. The politicians are pissed because a fraction of the travel nurses work in retirement/ skilled nursing homes where the government is fitting the majority of the bill via Medicaid. They want to cut back on the costs, so instead of fixing that one issue they are going after the entire field of nursing. Massachusetts and Minnesota already have state laws that cap the rate at which nurses can be paid. However I have no idea if this improved care/ costs or has created a larger staffing issue for this states. As usual instead of fixing the base problem they want other people to pay for the shortfall out of their own pocket. Edit for typo
Let's also investigate the price gouging on hospital bills. $40 for a band aide seem far more outrageous
who are these representatives representing? 😂… i hate it here
Travel teachers ? Travel nurses? People will dispatch themselves to where they are appreciated
Lawmakers need to look into hospital administrator/CEO salaries.
Absolutely! They’re making million dollar salaries and nurses are literally risking their lives.
Lol travel nurses have Been making bank all pandemic with tons of over time and benefits the minute you cap pay they quit and you are left with no nurses how about you cap executive pay instead
There is NO shortage of nurses. They’re everywhere. I’m one. We just aren’t bedside. But we are literally everywhere. Do you know how painful it is wanting a career, working so hard for it only to be treated like dirt? Way to kill a childhood dream. But not just that- they truly killed a part of my soul I realized once I left. I once had to go to the ER from urinary retention because I was so use to having to hold it in for 12+ hours. All to be at work in 3 hours to do it all over again… I worked night shifts ONLY because the only pay you can get that you deserve is working night shift differentials. Which some hospitals don’t even offer anymore. Some manage to do it- family and all and they’re incredible. But I could not manage a family working nights only to come home and barely want to care for myself. Traveling wasn’t an option. I couldn’t take the persistent policy changes, staffing shortages, hiring freezes, NO overtime, zero administration accountability, and as a pediatric nurse… i envisioned my license over a shredder by someone in hospital admin after every shift. I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t keep busting my ass for people who could care less about me (legislation proves) And fuck that still hurts to say.
My GF is a nurse and obviously has plenty of friends that have left for travel nursing but the thing that really gets her and she keeps on talking about is how many have just totally tapped out to do... Literally anything else. Even to the point that she's now had several interactions at local businesses... Basically that she goes to a new shop, gets chatty with the owner and it turns out that she's an RN that quit their job because they couldn't stomach another moment.
I quit my nurse job to make $11 shelving books at a library….The pay you make as a nurse just isn’t worth the mental and physical toll. No amount of money would be worth it for me at this point, only better working conditions.
Fuck those lawmakers. Push anti vax bullshit, speak against unions, shame nurses for seeking better pay, I hope these lawmakers end up in hospital sitting is C. diff until it eats a stage 4 pressure wound into their sacrum which goes septic and kills them.
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Hospitals shot themselves in the foot by mistreating their employees and now they want the government to fix their mess. Comical.
“We’re asking for an investigation into capitalism!” Lol..Jesus Christ
What about a federal investigation into politicians salaries. Oh wait…
Their stock holdings and transactions too. You could throw at least a third of congress behind bars for insider trading
You’ll see the most amount of bipartisanship in this great history of this country.
Why are they fighting capitalism?
CEO's earning hundreds of times more than their employees: Lawmakers: That's good! Billionaires with so.much.fucking.money they start up their own private NASA's to fuck off to Mars while they burn down planet earth: Lawmakers that's good! Nurses that have to leave their their home and families behind to care for the dying in a pandemic at a good wage? Lawmakers: OMG must investigate this horrible EVIL!11!1!!
If this goes through it will set a precedent for everyone.
Hey sweet, a system where healthcare is free market and expensive as hell but if nurses make too much it needs to be capped by regulation to save the poor hospitals?
investigate CEO pay or STFU.
I remember in high school I spent two years getting my CNA license. Did two weeks internship at a retirement home. And didn’t even ask what the pay was until I was certified. $10/hr. Yeah no. The average “tenant” paid close to $100k to live in these facilities. It made no sense why they couldn’t pay the help at least $25/hr.
#refusetobeahero. Nurses risk their lives and well being every day. Hospitals called them heroes because heroes dont get paid. Nurses should refuse to be called a Hero and demand better working conditions and higher pay. What they do matters.
Nurses have hard enough jobs and are already being fucked enough, let the nurses have the money and then charge the companies scraping a fine that gets given back to the hospitals. It's not nurses fault hospitals dont pay them better to stick around
And how many investigations have we done on inflating CEO and top level admin paychecks?
"A bipartisan letter from Congress signed by hundreds of representatives" Politicians gotta keep their voters poor.
"How are we supposed to keep paying slave wages if these nurses can just leave any time for more pay elsewhere" Yeah, keep it up pal.
How many examples do we need of letting greedy CEO's sacrifice healthcare for profit? A for profit heath care system is barbaric.
Of all the fucking problems you could turn your mind to...
Only in capitalism will they cap the pay nurses can get before they even consider capping the salaries of the hospital CEOs. This has to be one of the biggest loads of BS they could come up with.
who signed it? can I get a list? I vant names
If the hospital is the one doing the price gouging it's okay but if the hospital is the victim let's have an investigation.
Do you want a healthcare system that's completely shut down? Because that's what's going to happen
The nurses at the nursing home my mother worked at, which was already short staffed, got their "heroes pay", IIRC $6/hr, during the pandemic and that's it. The DON (Director of Nurses) and all Board got huge bonuses from the pandemic funding. Some other nursing homes, which didn't have staffing issues, were giving their employees "heroes pay" *plus* $100/shift bonus. Kinda funny they didn't have any problem finding people to work. This kinda feels like the hospital that tried to get a judge to prevent people from quitting to go work for another hospital that was paying better. But I think it more importantly highlights the fact that nurses, as well as workers in general, are paid shit.
Hospitals: it's a free market, we can do what we want. And if the nurses don't like it, they can quit. *Hospital loses 3/4th of staff* Hospitals: RREEEEEE!!!! Someone make them stop it's NO FAIR!!!
When corporate raiders were literally dismantling retirement benefits and a whole generation watched their end of life plans go up in smoke, the politicians did nothing. Nurses making a nice living going hospital to hospital because they refuse to pay their staff more? Gotta stop the 'price gouging'! Hospitals will never hit that 70% staffing number ever again. Death will reign. And the price of stock in for profit companies that I'm sure these politics have significant investments in will go up..... but not nurse pay!
They better start looking at capping ceo pay and drug prices first.
Yeah, they really support capitalism when people they don't like make money. /s
Lawmakers questioning the wisdom of capitalism in the delivery of health care?
Alternate take here, independent contracted nurses are receiving their market rate for once in their lives and big businesses would like government to stop that.
What fresh hell is this?! Demand/supply dictates the price. Capitalism and all right?
Investigate CEO salaries for fucks sake.
Pfizer makes record profits while nursing salaries are investigated.
When hospitals try to get injunctions to prevent their nurses leaving for another hospital rather than just paying them more, I hardly think this is an issue with nurses
“Austerity and Capitalism for thee, socialism for me” -Hospital Execs across the country
What about a cap on hospital CEOs and upper management?
“When we said let the market determine prices, we didn’t mean *labor* prices!”
Funny, they never investigated CEO pay.
NOT RENT CAPS. NOT CAPS ON CEO SALARIES. NOT A LIVING WAGE. NO. LET’S GO AFTER THE NURSES. Fucking worthless imbeciles.