Funding Nurses, Calling For Price Controls

Doomsy, as he calls himself, lives in suburban Philadelphia and runs liberaldoomsayer, which is a political and current event blog that he writes "to see through hypocrisy on as may fronts as possible for the purposes of promoting informed dialogue."

I am married to a nurse, and I can tell you that the reason why she is in private home care now is because she couldn't give the kind of care she was trained to give given the nurse/patient ratio of the hospital where she used to work. The hospital also paid at a below-market rate for nurses with her speciality and experience, and that had a lot to do with the turnover and perpetual short staffing.

I also think more government funding is needed for our colleges and institutions where nursing students can earn a four-year degree as an RN so there would be more slots available for likely candidates. My sister-in-law completed her basic courses but had to wait for years to get into a clinical rotation, and she was only recently able to do that (and her grades were excellent).

As far as reform goes, I think we need tighter price controls on the pharma and insurance industries before we can even seriously discuss something like so-called "tort reform" and caps on awards for pain and suffering. I don't understand why Canada, for example, gets better delivery for their health-care dollar than we do in this country in the way of expanded services.

I also know what the probability is that the pharma or insurance industries would ever be properly regulated in this country, especially with the cabal currently running our country as well as the Democrats, in all likelihood.