As a union nurse (1199) I can assure you all that the travelers making lots of money is NOT the problem, and is only happening rn because for the first time in decades, it is an area where workers are so desperately needed, yet so scarce, that they can basically name their rate and have it honored. This is scaring the shit out of the people at the top, and they want to nip it in the bud before other peasants start to catch on

Edit: Here's a direct link for ppl who don't want to go to R*DIT

https://welch.house.gov/sites/welch.house.gov/files/WH%20Nurse%20Staffing.pdf

If you have a SLAY KWEEN (D) rep or a Marjorie Taylor Green adjacent chud rep(R), they are both likely on this

  • bewts [he/him,comrade/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    This shit is enough to make a person snap. They should put a cap on the amount of air Democrats are allowed to breathe.

  • nohaybanda [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Gotta say, I'm loving that comment section. Lots of people correctly identifying capitalism as the culprit and being up voted for it.

    :bloomer:

      • JosipBRUHTito [none/use name]
        hexagon
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        Look ma, they're talking about my posts!

        This is my favorite so far tho:

        I have been corresponding with several friends in China throughout the entire pandemic. So many were shocked by the situation in NY, where the governor, at the behest of his donors, turned our nursing homes into meat grinders for old people, all the while so many "elective" floors that could have taken recovering COVID patients were closed, their staff furloughed or fired. Then he gave these companies immunity from liability for COVID deaths among residents, patients, and staff. I remember the week that happened, our hospital went from rationing PPE to being "Bring your own". I don't believe in coincidences.

        Perhaps the most shocking contrast was when they sent me the story of a government official in China, who had decided to delay a lockdown for a few days so a regional celebration that took massive planning could go off without a hitch. This caused a larger outbreak. He was tried and shot for negligent murder some months later. Meanwhile half of my family bought Cuomo's fucking book. He will live out his days in a castle somewhere in the Berkshires, and people will only remember that he is a perverted creep, not a mass murderer on behalf of the rich.

        We spend our formative years hearing from educators and the media about how life is cheap in China, how their system treats people like gears in a machine, easy to throw out and replace. But when push came to shove, they chose to pay a huge cost in gold and convenience to stop COVID, to save lives, not money. In America we knowingly chose to pay a huge cost in blood, to avoid hurting profits or inconveniencing the shareholders. Something to think about

      • UmbraVivi [he/him, she/her]
        ·
        2 years ago

        I swear some liberals are slowly turning around on China, I remember Susan Sarandon shared a video the other day about anti-China propaganda

      • nohaybanda [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        I know! Been pinching myself real hard, and it's still there!

  • Rod_Blagojevic [none/use name]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Look, we only have so much budget. We can't pay good wages to travel nurses AND neo nazis in Ukraine. I don't know what you want.

    • SoyViking [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Would it be possible to have the Ukrainian neo-nazis double as nurses?

      • JosipBRUHTito [none/use name]
        hexagon
        ·
        2 years ago

        You'd be surprised who they'll hire to cover night shift lol. Also nurses only have 2 political settings, mild socdem or FULL blue line MAGA chud, which would definitely encompass Ukrainian neo nazis

        • Commander_Data [she/her]
          ·
          2 years ago

          I'm still a couple of months from completing a GEM program, will I turn into a socdem if/when I pass the nclex?

          • JosipBRUHTito [none/use name]
            hexagon
            ·
            2 years ago

            You either become a socdem wearing compression stockings and sneakers, or a chud in crocs. They make you choose when you get licensed

    • Alex_Jones [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      And don't even get us started on treating Havana Syndrome and sending lethal aid to Israel?

    • JosipBRUHTito [none/use name]
      hexagon
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      I love to VOOT, been proudly writing in Josif Stalin on every ballot since 1996. Except once when a DSA candidate ran, will admit to my own LIBeralism. Might vote XI in the 2022 elections though, I'm still undecided

      • Homestar440 [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        I spent a non-trivial amount of time trying to figure out why you would vote for eleven…..me no brain good

  • JosipBRUHTito [none/use name]
    hexagon
    ·
    2 years ago

    I'm sure the people who own travel agencies are making bank too, ngl, but travel pay paid off my loans this past year, and was the only way I got fairly compensated for a gruelling understaffed job where I watch people die all day

    • TerminalEncounter [she/her]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      I wouldn't be surprised to see the prisoner labour for fire fighter model copied into prisoner labour for HCA and then widen HCAs scope way too much and then when they inevitably make a mistake (not really their fault, they don't have enough education or training and they won't have enough supervision) people will just get mad at the prisoner instead of the system as a whole.

      • tails__miles_prower [none/use name]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Just look at the collusion between the DEA and CDC in punishing doctors who care for chronic pain patients. I know people who were sent home with tylenol after having a leg amputation. I know to many people (women mostly) who are sent home from intensive surgery with little to no pain relief. Despite opioid use rising, prescribing is lowering. There has never been any proof that prescription painkillers were the problem. Yet, the DEA continues to go after doctors that actually care about their patients pain. I forsee that being the loophole to get unpaid professional work.

        https://reason.com/2006/06/02/the-doctor-wasnt-cruel-enough/

        "They showed addictionology for the sham science that it is," says Reynolds, explaining that in previous cases, the defense often had a hard time getting the jury to see that medications can't "make" people into addicts and that no one, addicted or otherwise, benefits from a system where doctors presume all pain is faked.

        "The government position is that the doctor wasn't cruel enough," she adds, describing how hard it was for previous defense teams to debunk the notion that addiction can be prevented or treated by stopping or failing to prescribe pain medication.

        "By making the pain patients real, we made the good guys and the bad guys change places—and that's hard to do," she says.

        Last week, Heberle was found not guilty on all charges. Unfortunately, at least one patient did not live to see the verdict— she had committed suicide, unable to find another doctor to prescribe the medications she needed. And Heberle, like Fisher, will no longer practice medicine, leaving many patients still without help.

        As Reynolds asks, "How can they call this protecting the public health?" We hope the Heberle case is the beginning of the end of these senseless prosecutions.

        Unfortunately, that was in 2006 and nothing seems to have changed.

        https://www.painnewsnetwork.org/stories/2018/4/2/doctors-and-pharmacists-arrested-in-dea-surge

        The DEA surge is the latest in a series of steps taken by Attorney General Jeff Sessions to crackdown on opioid prescribing. Last August, Sessions ordered the formation of a new data analysis team, the Opioid Fraud and Abuse Detection Unit, to focus solely on opioid-related health care fraud.

        Sessions also assigned a dozen prosecutors to “hot spots” around the country where opioid addiction is common. Last week the DEA said it would add 250 investigators to a task force assisting in those investigations.

        Although overdose deaths are primarily caused by illicit drugs such as fentanyl, heroin and cocaine, federal law enforcement efforts appear focused on opioid prescribing. Doctors and pharmacists are easier to target because they are already in DEA databases, as opposed to drug dealers and smugglers operating in the black market.

        As PNN has reported, the data mining of opioid prescriptions -- without examining the full context of who the medications were written for or why – can be problematic and misleading.

        For example, last year the DEA raided the offices of Dr. Forest Tennant, a prominent California pain physician, because he had “very suspicious prescribing patterns.” Tennant only treated intractable pain patients, many from out-of-state, and often prescribed high doses of opioids because of their chronically poor health -- important facts that were omitted or ignored by DEA investigators.

        That was in 2018 and nothing has changed despite these facts being the exact same for nearly a decade.

        https://www.cleveland.com/news/2020/07/charges-against-pain-doctor-reveal-undercurrent-of-anger-angst-among-patients-at-federal-government.html

        Since 2017, more than 450 doctors and medical personnel across the country have been accused of opioid-related charges, according to the U.S. Justice Department and published reports.

        But in recent months, there has been a growing undercurrent of resistance. Patients have questioned the government's motives on social media.

        In court documents and interviews, lawyers for doctors said the government has focused on independent physicians who specialize in pain management.

        They claimed that prosecutors and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration based their cases solely on the number of prescriptions that doctors have written. They said that many pain-management specialists are often the sole treatment option in communities, drawing hundreds of patients in need of help.

        "Prosecutors nationwide are unfairly targeting physicians – particularly pain-management physicians – for criminal prosecution," said Richard Blake, a former federal prosecutor in Cleveland who now represents doctors and medical companies.

        "For more than 20 years, government regulators, medical boards and hospitals instructed these doctors to lower patient pain levels and evaluated them on this criteria. The government is now holding physicians to a more conservative 'post-opioid crisis' standard for medical decisions made years earlier."

        Same article shows them going after doctors who are critical of the DEA's interference.

        Gibbons and Stifel wrote that Bauer was targeted not because of his work as a doctor, but because he has attacked the DEA and regulators for years.

        "Dr. Bauer has been a long-standing, vocal critic of interference in the physician-patient relations by the DEA, by the 'War on Drugs/Opioids,' by the insurance industry and by Big Pharma," the attorneys said in documents.

        After the charges were filed in August, Bauer spoke to the Sandusky Register in a broadcast interview. In it, he blasted government interference in a patient-doctor relationship.

        “What bothers me is that I stuck around in this because I loved to help patients,” Bauer told the paper. “I can’t stand to see this happen to them.”

      • JosipBRUHTito [none/use name]
        hexagon
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        They already have been in NY, multiple times during COVID

        https://www.army.mil/article/253011/ny_national_guard_troops_providing_relief_to_upstate_nursing_home

        Usually it starts with us getting equipment from them, and eventually they come in and start taking over grunt work on the COVID units.

        • Socialcreditscorr [they/them,she/her]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Fucking hell. I heard jokes about conscripting everyone into the national guard and then using them to permanently cover "essential services" but it seems like attempting something like this is a genuine possibility. :agony-shivering:

          • JosipBRUHTito [none/use name]
            hexagon
            ·
            2 years ago

            The thing about the national guard though, most of them have jobs during the week. Soooooo that probably won't work. Even making them go into hospitals has gotten a lot of them fired and is causing huge discontent among the units around here

            • SerLava [he/him]
              ·
              2 years ago

              lmao they just get conscripted during the week and then fired???

              LOL

              What an incompetent shithole HAHA

          • neera_tanden [she/her]
            ·
            2 years ago

            I think mayor Pete is too naive on most things, but his national service idea would help make this a reality :)

    • JosipBRUHTito [none/use name]
      hexagon
      ·
      2 years ago

      There is a registry for this sort of thing at the state level in NY. It has never been activated in a draft sense but we did use it once to call people to volunteer during a huge flood. It was also used to look for volunteers during COVID, because I was getting texts, while working at a hospital, asking me to volunteer at a hospital, because I was an EMT before RN.

      • PorkrollPosadist [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        asking me to volunteer

        :what-the-hell:

        Would you be interested in spending all of your spare time in the plague ward... for free? As a demonstration of charity?

        • JosipBRUHTito [none/use name]
          hexagon
          ·
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          YUP, my hospital at the height of the first wave of deaths FIRED most of the janitorial staff and then tried to get volunteers to scrub down rooms. Of course people realized this was bullshit so we just had dirty rooms for quite some time. Mind you, record breaking profits every quarter. Never start out at a non union hospital if at all possible

          Also if the state volunteers got sick and ended up hospitalized they were on the hook for their own care/funeral bills

    • Bloobish [comrade/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I mean they pretty much tried to do that in Wisconsin, so yeah we are prolly gonna see some shit like what they did with air traffic control that stops nurses from striking

  • clover [she/her]
    ·
    2 years ago

    No more nurses

    The world has progressed past the need desire for nurses

    We’re so fucking doomed

      • clover [she/her]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        Damn. Feels like every third person in my family is a RN so I've seen some of the struggle. I really hope things get better for you all soon. :deeper-sadness:

        • Bloobish [comrade/them]
          ·
          2 years ago

          What's funny is that most nurses don't do it to get insanely rich, the latest situation with covid just shows how hospital nursing (extended care nursing) is so inhuman and has functioned on the assumption of endless nurses they can break and discard. Covid is the reason why I'm orienting towards a public health nursing career in the immediate future.

            • Bloobish [comrade/them]
              ·
              2 years ago

              Have you thought about a non hospital nursing field like aesthetics nursing? Yeah you gotta do procedures on bougie libs and chuds but it doesn't break you physically at least from what I hear

          • Oldreader [none/use name]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Nurses can make six figures, easily. Especially if you do shift work or travel nursing. Plenty of nurses out there with a second home by the lake, bass boat, jetski, etc.

            • Bloobish [comrade/them]
              ·
              2 years ago

              Truth but that can destroy a lot of folk bodies and I've enjoyed what I've done so far public health wise (lots of work with families and homeless that need medical care). The best nursing grind is getting into asthetic, ecmo, or surgical theater due to the money and work-life balance

  • HodgePodge [love/loves]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    oooh thanks for sharing this. I just forwarded it to someone I know in a nurse's union. They're bringing this to the rest of their group tomorrow. She was pissed and wants to remove funding for our Dem rep who signed this. They're up for re-election this year too lol

    :sicko-fem:

    • JosipBRUHTito [none/use name]
      hexagon
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      Incredibly based, waiting to see what mine does but I think we already stopped supporting Dems(so not donating to anyone really) after Cuomo did nursing home Dachau

  • Bloobish [comrade/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    From r/nursing "I’m so fucking sick of all this. China has been jailing corrupt CEOs and we get them promoted to lawmaker, this shit is going to turn upside so quick here."
    :sicko-yes: radicalize my brethren, radicalize!

    • JosipBRUHTito [none/use name]
      hexagon
      ·
      2 years ago

      China is something the USSR could never hope to be in the later years of the Cold War, competent. And the new era of internet media makes this impossible for America to cover up or propagandize away

      • Bloobish [comrade/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        From what I understand a lot of this comes from China understanding that if they entangle themselves with the west while still operating under socialist principle then it'd be mutual suicide if they collapsed cuss they would take the US economy with them correct? I'm a newbie to Chinese policy but so far it seems Deng had some good ideas on taking the teeth from the US

        • JosipBRUHTito [none/use name]
          hexagon
          ·
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          I have seen some well translated Chinese lectures on this, and basically it boils down to what you are saying, but also fit their situation well. Think about China in 1970s. A preindustrial society devastated by decades of war and invasion, struggling to industrialize. They needed industry, technology, and money. All they really had were natural resources and a well educated population (one of the aspects of the cultural revolution period that actually worked out quite well were literacy campaigns.). Their leaders had refused to be a flunky to what they rightfully saw as the decaying Soviet Union, they weren't content to just take orders from Moscow, which didn't leave them with many options. To accomplish rapid and massive industrialization, on a scale never seen before or since, they just had to bait the West, and lead their CEOs, industrialists, and bankers by the nose. They had the best trained workforce in the world willing to work for third world wages, and were a relatively safe and stable country. And of course, they copied the shit out of every piece of machinery and industrial equipment that was sent to them. They were playing catch up in a game where they were several hundreds of years behind in development. That is where the stereotype of China stealing inventions comes from, and in those early years it was pretty accurate.

          However, with this growing industrial base established, China was able to do what the rest of the developing world nations are not powerful/self sustaining enough to do, which was to cut their reliance on technology and foreign capital flowing into the country. Now it is decades later, and they don't need our help developing industry. They don't need foreign technology, because in many areas they have now advanced to or beyond the Western standard. And soon with the Belt and Road initiative, they will no longer need America's capital or consumer base. Kwame Nkruma in Ghana was very particular in that Ghana was going to "modernize", not "Westernize". China is the most successful example of this in modern times, and historically on par with the explosive rise of industry in the Soviet Union.

          However, China is not the Soviet Union of yore, and people need to realize this. They are not(yet) arming left wing rebel groups anywhere, to my knowledge. And I do not expect them to start doing this for another decade or two, if they do at all. Really the only thing I think we can expect with any certainty over the coming decades is the slow but steady rise of China as the leading world power, in trade, technology, and eventually influence on the world stage. What will happen, and how they will respond to a flailing and dying empire in the West remains to be seen.

          • Bloobish [comrade/them]
            ·
            2 years ago

            My honest opinion with what little I know is that likely they'll begin going hard in dominating geopolitics once the US has it's own suez canal moment as well as begins falling apart from the inside even more rapidly. Here's hoping China can be a guiding light in these times when they do decide to finally start aiding nascant leftist movements (the aid China is doing with the Sandinista gov is awesome)

            • JosipBRUHTito [none/use name]
              hexagon
              ·
              2 years ago

              Oh absolutely, hopefully that's just them getting their feet wet. Also what is a Suez canal moment, not sure what this references. The US did have a Suez canal moment in Panama a long time ago lol

              • Bloobish [comrade/them]
                ·
                2 years ago

                It's a reference to Britain losing control of the Suez Canal post WWII when Egypt tried nationalizing it then the US came in and took it and did not give it back, it's more or less a seminal event that signals a previous empire is no longer ascendant

            • Oldreader [none/use name]
              ·
              2 years ago

              once the US has it’s own suez canal moment

              Didn't that already happen?

              Several times?

              • Bloobish [comrade/them]
                ·
                2 years ago

                Small microcosms of it yeah, but tbh we will have a moment like it when China decides to take Taiwan or a trade port from the US and the rest of the world doesn't care and tells the US to sit down.

                • Oldreader [none/use name]
                  ·
                  2 years ago

                  I've followed several Suez moments where US power was decisively broken, forever. Now I hear it hasn't happened yet?

                  • Bloobish [comrade/them]
                    ·
                    2 years ago

                    I could be wrong in how I'm applying it but I've always been under the assumption that a suez moment is when a event occurs that fully cements the collapse of a nation and its fall from geopolitical dominance (I see the US currently slipping but they've yet to fully fall until all the US military bases lay abandoned and rotting imo)

                    • Oldreader [none/use name]
                      ·
                      edit-2
                      2 years ago

                      I heard Trump's attempted withdrawal from Syria that was blocked by the Pentagon was a Suez moment. His attempted withdrawal from Germany that was blocked by the Pentagon was a Suez moment. Biden's disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan was definitely a Suez moment. But it's going to happen real soon now?

                      If this dang website had a search function I'd find all the posts.

                      • Bloobish [comrade/them]
                        ·
                        2 years ago

                        Tbh those are also good moments as well indicating US collapse, though tbh I think for me the moment will be when a nation (prolly China) says straight to the US "fuck you this is mine now fuck off" and the US just accepts it (and it has to be something big like Taiwan or the islands of the south china sea and surrounding region.

          • NaturalsNotInIt [any]
            ·
            2 years ago

            I wouldn't expect China to be arming left wing movements in the next 20 years, they probably won't ever do that. China is actually doing "socialism in one country", and it's worked fantastically. Imagine if the Soviets had actually been able to develop on their own, or if they could have given up that Trotsky/LeftCom-esque need to stoke the global movement and developed relationships with the "Non-Aligned movement" instead of trying to force other countries to follow Moscow.

        • PorkrollPosadist [he/him, they/them]
          ·
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          Regardless of if it was the plan or simply the consequence (on either side of capital or communism), finance sought cheaper wages and shitter working conditions, and China used this to its advantage to develop its productive forces. I still can't reconcile whether this was a massive capitulation or some 4D hyper-chess shit, but the end result is the same. China has ended up as an economic and industrial powerhouse, while being the only nation on its scale to maintain any ability to subjugate finance. They still operate largely under the capitalist mode of production, but capital's influence is limited to a degree we can't even imagine in the west.

      • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        China is something the USSR could never hope to be in the later years of the Cold War, competent.

        The competency of the Chinese state is always and forever up for debate. Certainly, Xi wouldn't need to run around doing SWAT raids and mass arrests if everyone downstream operated as this friction-less corruption-free communist utopian machine. But the Chinese state has a massive population and a firm position within the global supply chain, up to and including directly into the beating heart of the Western Empire. It has room to fail, to engage in inefficiency, to analyze and self-correct, and to improve over time. That's a benefit the USSR never had.

        The USSR entered the 1950s struggling to yank its post-war accumulated satellite territory out of horrific poverty and potential population collapse. It had to immediately position itself for a global Cold War that would last the next fifty years. And it would need to fight a propaganda war against a rival that had been fighting communist ideology domestically for longer than it had existed.

        China entered the 20th century with a fabulously wealthy industrial coastline and an utterly insulated interior. It had a glut of domestic workers, a wealth of domestic and neighbor-state resources to draw on, a global supply chain to exploit, and the tacit approval of western powers to pursue unlimited speedy economic growth in anticipation of a Capitalist-Reform pivot some time in the next decade. The west wasn't in a Cold War with China. It was engaged in a kind-of East Coast Marshal Plan - just plowing every last ounce of capitalist energy into assisting Beijing with rapid industrialization and incorporation into the western economic engine.

        You can write this off as Deng's 11D chess. Or ascribe it to a Nixon/Reagan-Era colossal foreign policy fuck up. Or just note how 9/11 Changed Everything, accidentally deflecting America's imperialist impulses from China to the Middle East for nearly 20 years. But it has far less to do with Chinese inherent competence than a simple historical exemption to the Cold War that China benefited from and Russia did not.

  • congressbaseballfan [she/her]
    ·
    2 years ago

    This makes me so mad because they could take action on ports and trucking companies who are actually profiteering right now and causing all sorts of trouble