SpaceBus
Minister of Fire
Or perhaps our nurses are underpaid, as well as the doctors. If education and liability insurance were less expensive perhaps nurses and doctors wouldn't have to charge as much for their services.
Healthcare
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False presumptions. According to U.S. Census Bureau data from 2018, the latest release, the median household income was $63,179. Many nurses are single parents. In Seattle that would be a low income and a struggle for a single parent to pay the bills.
Unfortunately, properly executed is the issue... Nothing govt run here is well executed. The first step would be fixing the system, which ain't gonna happen anytime soon...
Nothing is perfect. There are lots of flaws in private healthcare systems too. That said, the Medicare system is pretty well run.
It works elsewhere that way. I am sure if we wanted it to work here it would. The problem is many would be fighting to make it fail from the start. Our govt needs fixed before anything else meaningful can happen.
I'm surprised. I retired early from Ma Bell in 1993 at age 49. During my 25 years I never paid a penny for health insurance. After I retired I still paid nothing, until that letter---your on medicare. So starting then and still I have to pay $$$$ to medicare and $$$$ to Verizon what I used to have for over 40 years for ZERO.
How is that the fault of the Medicare system. Everyone else has to pay why shouldn't you? If anything blame your former employer who cut you off.
Ashful
Minister of Fire
When did I say nurses should make $30k per year? I never said that. They’re trained professionals, of course they need to make more than average salary. Around here, nurses come out of school landing jobs in the mid-$50k’s, and most often rise into the low-$80k’s by mid-career. That is what the market has dictated, not $30k... and not $100k.
Was your daughter unaware of nursing salaries when she chose to go to school for nursing? Was she expecting $100k per year?
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Medic21
Minister of Fire
Nurses should be paid according to AS, BS, MS degrees and here the starting wage reflects that. I make $75k as a Paramedic with over 20 yrs experience. Most Medics start at $40k a year here but median is $36k for the state. We are a little higher because we have major hospital systems employing most and they have made others pay more to compete with the experienced medics. RNs are a little low. Wife is at $80k with 15 years and a ton of pediatric and adult trauma certifications with her NP. She does not work as an NP in the ER as they have done away with the mid level practitioners so her pay scale is at the Masters level. She is basically maxed out.
RNs in the hospital are actually underpaid in my opinion. It’s ass backwards when one in a family practice office is paid higher to take a temp and give a few shots but, that is what’s happening a lot of places. There were too many RNs coming out of school 10 years ago and it drove wages down.
Ashful
Minister of Fire
Exactly. Like every other profession, including my own. And beyond that, different industries will pay at varying rates for the same profession. I know bholler likes to claim nursing is somehow outside the free market, and that is true of some industries requiring nurses, but not as a whole. One of my family members who is a nurse has changed careers twice in her 15 years in the profession, with changes in pay to suit those changes.
I don't see how you can say our healthcare system is free market. Between the multiple large public systems and the fact that pricing is also largely fixed by insurance companies it is simply not a free market. Yes there certainly are some elements of a free market but many that aren't
Medic21
Minister of Fire
Pricing isn’t fixed by insurance companies. Insurance companies dictate payment amounts. They negotiate lower rates all day long. It’s the uninsured that pay the most.
Medic21
Minister of Fire
Not when the insurance companies regularly pay around 40% of the bill. They negotiate that lower
Rate.
Ashful
Minister of Fire
I say it is a free market because it is not a monopoly. You can always change employers, just as with most other professions. Insurance companies do not employ the majority of nurses in this country, hospitals, private practices, clinics, and in-home services employ nurses and doctors. How those employers determine the ratio of pay between these two professions, as well as the others they employ in the course of doing their business, has absolutely nothing to do with the insurance companies handling payment between the patient and that employer.
SpaceBus
Minister of Fire
Honestly the whole industry is kind of crooked for nursing. By law an LPN can do almost everything an AS (RN) or BSN (RN), but the LPN requires far less education and experience. My wife has been an LPN for longer than I've known her and she can work circles around most RNs. Hospitals want nurses with nursing degrees because the hospital can then charge more money. Degreed nurses are more profitable for the hospital, but not for the nurse.
SpaceBus
Minister of Fire
Honestly Healthcare workers are pretty much pigeonholed into one place of work. Also, the insurance companies frequently dictate pricing. Do you know what it costs to get an IV bag at the hospital? Not even to have the IV catheter placed, but just the bag costs over $100 usually, and it's just salt water. The insurance companies jack up the prices so they too can make profit. Hospitals are just giant profit centers because most people have to come in contact with lots hazards in their daily lives. Cancers caused by asbestos, concrete dust, silica, Teflon, petrochemicals, auto accidents, muscle injuries, and so on generate big money for hospitals. It's like our economy is based on making people sick and keeping the hospitals full.
Hell, some employers make more profit from a dead employee than a live one. Walmart and several banks got in a big mess for starting life insurance policies on employees without their knowledge.
Ashful
Minister of Fire
Tinfoil hat time. Not sure what that last paragraph even has to do with this thread. Your employer wants you dead? Sheesh!
Insurance companies don’t set the price of placing an IV, they only negotiate what they’re willing to pay for it. The hospital sets the price for the IV, the insurance agrees to pay a fraction of that, and the uninsured pay the full price. Pretty simple system, no conspiracy required.
The only real gripe to be made among the subjects in your last post is with the liability costs created by our litigious society, that results in hospitals needing to charge $100 for plugging you into a bag of salt water. The cost isn’t in the product, it’s in the procedure around it, and the associated liability. If you want to gripe about nurses needing more salary, look at where that money is going... to the parasitic lawyers that have attached themselves to that industry.
And you are not pigeon-holed into anything. My sister has worked at a half dozen different hospitals in the last 20 years. My cousin, an RN, has worked for theee different employers in the last 12 years. One was a very large hospital, one was a home nursing service, and now the third is a call service for tele-medicine. How on earth do you get away with calling that pigeon-holed?
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Ashful
Minister of Fire
Oh... and before anyone misconstrues what I said as a desire to eliminate all lawyers, that is not what I am saying, either. But if there should be adjustments made, or government intervention in any way, it should be thru better and more intelligent control of liability. Our healthcare providers must be liable for our care, but the free-for-all litigious playground we have today is only benefitting a very small and largely-parasitic fraction of our population... the lawyers.
SpaceBus
Minister of Fire
No, the cost for the bag is $100, it costs two to three times as much to get a catheter placed. Usually one consumes several IV bags during a hospital stay. Even just a phlebotomist drawing blood can cost several hundred dollars. I've spent a lot of time in hospitals due to health problems given to me by the military. Thankfully the government covers nearly all of my cost for treatment aside from dental and vision, but that's another story. Honestly though I'd rather just not have to get treatment and not be paid a pension or free healthcare, but again, another story.
Last January I spent nearly a week in the hospital without any surgery, just staying in a room by myself for several days. They gave me some IV iron, an antibiotic, and IVIG therapy and the total cost eclipsed $70,000..... My wife needed life saving abdominal surgery and it was close to or maybe even over six figures. You can't possibly try to tell me this is appropriate. We both needed these life saving interventions, yet without my insurance we would have been denied. Sure, the emergency room has to take a person in and treat them, but once the person is stabilized they will be released if they don't have insurance. My wife worked in an Emergency room in FL for many years, so this is not an uncommon occurrence.
The healthcare system is completely broken and designed to be a profit generator. To say otherwise is completely ignoring the truth staring all of us right in the face.
To quibble about the insurance company vs the hospital setting prices is pointless as well. Both sides are making out like bandits and the American working people are the ones who suffer.
Last January I spent nearly a week in the hospital without any surgery, just staying in a room by myself for several days. They gave me some IV iron, an antibiotic, and IVIG therapy and the total cost eclipsed $70,000..... My wife needed life saving abdominal surgery and it was close to or maybe even over six figures. You can't possibly try to tell me this is appropriate. We both needed these life saving interventions, yet without my insurance we would have been denied. Sure, the emergency room has to take a person in and treat them, but once the person is stabilized they will be released if they don't have insurance. My wife worked in an Emergency room in FL for many years, so this is not an uncommon occurrence.
The healthcare system is completely broken and designed to be a profit generator. To say otherwise is completely ignoring the truth staring all of us right in the face.
To quibble about the insurance company vs the hospital setting prices is pointless as well. Both sides are making out like bandits and the American working people are the ones who suffer.
Nurses don't make anywhere near 3x the avererage US Salary, which would be around $150K in rough numbers. My Daughter is very satisfied with what she earns, and plans on continuing her education so she can earn more.
