r/FluentInFinance • u/The-Lucky-Investor • 11d ago

“Medicare for All” would save the U.S $5.1 Trillion over 10 years Discussion/ Debate

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/11/30/easy-pay-something-costs-less-new-study-shows-medicare-all-would-save-us-51-trillion
21.5k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

2.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

73

u/Secret_Squire1 11d ago

American having lived in Europe and the UK.

No it’s more like having to wait several weeks to be seen by a GP to be told to go home and take Tylenol while resting. I had my foot run over by a car and was told the same thing.

224

u/Cadet_Stimpy 11d ago

It takes months to get appointments in the US now too. It’s not a socialized healthcare issue, it’s a medical professional shortage issue.

130

u/TrustMental6895 11d ago

There's so many new grads that can't get residencies. This is a manufactured issue or the hospital cutting staff to save money.

119

u/dskimilwaukee 11d ago

RN here. Hospital cutting staff or running thin to save money. They sure as shit don't pay nurses enough either. All about maximizing profits for the c suites.

28

u/GrandmaCheese1 11d ago

Another issue that gets overlooked is the pay for instructors.

In my state, all Nursing instructors (except for clinical instructors) are required to have their Masters with a focus in education, but most positions are about the same pay as a bedside nurse.

Why am I going to go into debt to pursue a significantly higher degree to get paid the same amount of money?

You need more instructors to allow for more potential nurses to hit the workforce.

I’ve always considered education further into my future but can’t justify going back for my BSN, then also my MSN, to make the same amount of money I am now.

If salaries start improving for educators or the requirements start to lower due to “The Nursing Shortage” that we’re all expecting, then I’ll probably get into when I get older.

10

u/MizStazya 11d ago

In larger universities, nursing professors are generally paid less than other science degree programs.

2

u/Loud-East1969 9d ago

I think that’s the norm for most professions. College professor isn’t exactly a lucrative career nowadays.

1

u/Big-Leadership1001 9d ago

At least professors can get tenure and have a guaranteed long term career. Nurses don't know if they will be cut next week let alone where they will be in 10 years.

I think both suffer the same overall problem of executives scooping up all of the increasingly unaffordable money and shitting on everyone else who actually does the work itself.

1

u/ValuableKill 9d ago

Your hospital doesn't have a program to help pay for your education for you to get your masters? It might just be because all the hospitals in my area are tied to universities, but for example, I looked it up, and Duke will cover 90% of the tuition for your MSN degree if you agree to go to their college, and have worked for them as a nurse for three or more years.

2

u/GrandmaCheese1 9d ago

BSN, but not MSN.

BSN to MSN is still like $20k of debt to pursue a degree that doesn’t earn me an increase in wages to pay it back.

Financially it doesn’t make sense.

15

u/vonkeswick 11d ago

maximizing profits for the c suites

well yeah, the CEO definitely earned his yacht and really needs to redo the wood trim in the yacht's kitchen /s

2

u/InformalPenguinz 10d ago

redo the wood trim in the yacht's kitchen

I've done general contracting for a few billionaires and millionaires with my dad. Common theme is waste. Oh that imported marble had one imperceptible flaw that will go on the underside? Better just throw that one away... no don't return it, sell it, give it away... throw it in the pit. I've worked on many ranches that have a pit to just throw shit like that away.

New billionaire bought the property? Hmm, they don't love the sink, so we better redo the ENTIRE KITCHEN to match this $15000 randomly imported sink from Italy. Can we salvage the wood? Appliances? Etc?.. nope into the pit.

Ugh.

3

u/MizStazya 11d ago

It's because you don't pay for your nursing care. It's rolled into the room charge, so hospitals are highly incentivized to use as little nursing as possible. A 20-year-old who had an appendectomy, gets to the bathroom by themselves, and needs a couple doses of antibiotics and pain meds pays the exact same amount for nursing care as an 80-year-old 400 pound incontinent dementia patient with 15 medications, who needs turning every 2 hours, frequent bed changes, 1:1 feeding, multiple dressing changes, etc. If we charged for nursing care based on the actual amount of nursing time needed and used, they might not be so quick to run us bare bones.

1

u/rileyjw90 10d ago

Nurses also spend a lot of money (use a lot of supplies). We don’t make the hospital any money at all. Doesn’t matter that those supplies are necessary and often life-saving, we still open them up and use them.

1

u/MizStazya 10d ago

And hopefully charge for them - unlike nurses, most supplies CAN be billed, but we're pretty terrible about actually doing it IME.

1

u/rileyjw90 10d ago edited 10d ago

There’s a lot of things at my hospital where there’s not even really a way to bill for things. We don’t scan things to specific patients. It just gets bundled into their stay (flushes, gauze, etc). But there are times bigger things get wasted because they fall on the floor or the practitioner misses and has to try again somewhere else (like placing an arterial line for example) that those things definitely don’t get billed because it’s the staffs fault. I also think of when I used to do CRRT in the ICU (continuous dialysis) sometimes they would decide to end therapy right after we’d started a new set or connected fresh bags of dialysate and those things are sooooooo expensive. Or when they stop the fentanyl/levophed/propofol etc drip after we’ve just hung a new bag or bottle like bro this shit is EXPENSIVE and here we are having to waste almost an entire bag of it!

3

u/IndependenceIcy2251 11d ago

I’d say that’s true of every industry these days, from fast food places having like 2 people to stores having one person trying to run a register and stock shelves.

1

u/BasilExposition2 11d ago

This is an issue at non profit hospitals too. Health care is like 20% of GDP. Shit is expensive.

1

u/atn0716 10d ago

How much are you getting paid?

1

u/dskimilwaukee 10d ago

I make 41 and change. Milw WI 4 year RN big jump from 32 when I switched jobs. The huge problem is raises don't go through your department or management. You get a meets exceeds etcetera but it goes to hr anyways so for example I got a significantly exceeds expectations this year and got 3.76%. A coworker that doesn't do any of the shared governance or things like that that I do got 3.5

Edit: spelling

1

u/FlixFlix 10d ago

You’re right about units running on skeleton staff with high ratios and few or no PCTs, but the doctor shortage is indeed a manufactured problem by the AMA.

0

u/TrustMental6895 11d ago

Move to california $75+ starting and a strong union.

1

u/PubstarHero 11d ago

Mom's an RN in CA - She still bitches about repeatedly being understaffed because the hospital doesn't want to pay out and has gotten into fights with management because she is the only one trained on post open heart surgery in her department (which requires 1 on 1 for a nurse), yet they repeatedly under staff the ICU and try to get her to take on multiple patients. She obviously refuses for legal reasons, top being she could lose her license, but its still shit out here apparently.

1

u/TrustMental6895 11d ago

What does the union do?

2

u/PubstarHero 11d ago

They back her up so she doesn't get fired, but nurse to patient ratio problems is something I've heard my mom pitching about since the early 2000s.

1

u/dskimilwaukee 10d ago

would love a union. I'm in Milwaukee Wisconsin though and all 3 hospitals are massive. Will never happen.

0

u/KennyLagerins 11d ago

Nursing salaries have risen at a far higher rate than anyone else in a hospital. It’s not at all uncommon to see 6-figure young RNs anymore, making more than some of the Managers and Directors of non-clinical departments.

2

u/HotResponsibility829 11d ago

As they should. Nurses are still underpaid like most other workers. Nurses making 6-figures are working more than 40 hours a week the majority of the time as well. Again, good for them. Still not enough. Just like others.

0

u/KennyLagerins 11d ago

If everyone is underpaid then nobody is underpaid.

Nurses making six figures where I’m at are working 3x12s which is a fantastic schedule and they relentlessly complain about it. They’re also responsible for less workload than before as more duties are shifted to techs, aides, specialties, and the other departments in a hospital.

I don’t blame them for getting what they can, but don’t complain when you’re getting taken better care of than the rest but can’t see it.

1

u/HotResponsibility829 11d ago

I said “most other workers”. Not everyone is

underpaid. One of my parents is a director and the other is a nurse. I see both sides. My director parent is basically on call 24/7. Does not get paid enough. My other parent has 20+ years of experience as well and gets paid very well as they should.

That’s fantastic! Making 54/hr as a nurse is amazing. I definitely wouldn’t be complaining making 6 figures working 36 hours a week. I understand where you are coming from there.

Most workers are underpaid. This is obviously an opinion, but if you look at inflation on life’s necessities compared to wages, it’s not keeping up. That is a macro analysis. Obviously healthcare is it’s own economic situation.

0

u/KennyLagerins 11d ago

Everyone says they’re underpaid. The unfortunate things is that most aren’t for their actual body of work (even if it hurts feelings), and some of those yelling about it hardest will be replaced by automation and robotics soon.

Inflation is an entirely different conversation, and massive market corrections just don’t happen overnight.

1

u/TrichomesNTerpenes 10d ago

All nurses do is whine making twice as much as house staff for half the hours lol.

120k in NYC for 3 shifts a week and bennies.

1

u/Notsurehowtoreact 10d ago

Yeah, this is my experience with nurses as well.

Bedside nursing isn't easy work, but it is insanely lucrative. What's that bit going around, if you removed the top 1000 highest earners in the U.S. the average salary would be around 35k... and nurses make 77k+.

Like, yes, wages across the board could be better, but to make $40+ an hour as a starting wage and act as if you're being slighted the hardest when it comes to wages is ludicrous.

I have a family of nurses and they are all in agreement that they want to make more but they are still doing very well and others have it far worse.

1

u/KennyLagerins 10d ago

It just really gets me when they complain about the schedules. A, you should have known even before nursing school what the schedule was, and B. It’s a fantastic schedule.

You work 3 days a week, so you could realistically be out for 8 days in a row and not touch PTO. You could be out for 15 days in a row and only use 3 days of PTO. 12 hours a day isn’t that bad when it’s 3x, hell, a lot of people work 10s 5 days a week or more. Plus there’s shift diffs, hazard pay, overtime, and on and on.

0

u/IbegTWOdiffer 11d ago

If you aren't making $35 - $50/hour as a RN, you are letting that 2 year associates degree go to waste.

1

u/dskimilwaukee 10d ago

I make 41 and some change. Associates for first two years just got my bsn in year 4. Going back for my masters but an mba instead of the bullshit nursing masters where you don't even make more unless you are an NP but that market is saturated.

1

u/Notsurehowtoreact 10d ago

To be fair, $41/hr is double the average salary in Milwaukee.

Wages across the board could be better, but you're not exactly in a terrible spot.

1

u/dskimilwaukee 10d ago

oh I know I'm not. I do ok, but I had to earn the 41 and to be honest nursing is a hard job. The ones who make the most tho are the ones who do the least. Executives.