Last week’s Mazza’s Take explained how Congress does American Hospital Association’s bidding by asking the feds to investigate nurse staffing agencies for “profiteering” and “anti-competitive behavior.”
Congress directed to cap nurses’ pay. Hospitals want Congress and the feds to dictate staffing agencies’ prices, which means dictate nurses’ wages. For public consumption, Congress and the feds bloviate about “ensuring competition” because it sounds a whole lot better than saying hospitals need to protect profits and executive compensation by capping nurses’ pay. Of course, hospitals could match travel nurses’ pay and put the staffing agencies out of business, but that’s off the table.
Do the Feds Cap Prices in Other Industries? Absolutely Not!
The same federal agencies tasked with capping nurses’ wages blather about inflationary price increases and record industry profits, but are they capping those industries’ prices? Hell no! They’re changing regulations and offering subsidies to “ensure competition.” Here’s a sampling from recent business press articles.
Meat. four US meat-packing companies Cargill, Tyson Foods, JBS, and National Beef Packing—control 55% to 85% of the hog, cattle, and chicken markets. Rising meat prices, the fastest rise in 30 years, affect millions of American families. Meanwhile, the meat packers are earning record profits. Have the feds proposed capping the price of pork chops? Uh no. Biden proposed $1 billion in subsidies to encourage independent/smaller meat packers. Following this line of bullshit logic, the solution to staffing agency pricing is $1 billion in subsidies to encourage the formation of more staff agencies!
Hearing Aids. According to a Wall Street Journal article on Feb. 5, hearing aids cost consumers, primarily seniors, up to $5000. Only four manufacturers control the hearing aid market and so can charge exorbitantly high prices. Are the Feds going to cap the price of hearing aids? Not a chance. They’re going to “increase competition” by changing regulations to allow over-the-counter sales...if that actually happens over the objection of the hearing aid manufacturers’ lobby.
Hospitals. A recent editorial in The Wall Street Journal called out Indiana NON-PROFIT hospitals for price gouging. You read that right—NON-PROFIT hospitals. The editorial claimed that hospital prices in Indiana are the 5th highest in the country and that non-profit Indiana University Health’s prices are 50% higher than the national average.
“When most people hear the word ‘nonprofit’ they think of a benevolent organization driven by a desire to serve the community. This is certainly true of the public’s perception of nonprofit hospitals, which—like charities and churches—don’t pay federal, state and local taxes. Yet many large nonprofit hospitals charge unjustifiably high prices, which have led to irresponsible costs, exorbitant executive salaries and wasteful capital projects.”
The editorial raises fears that Indiana’s hospital price gouging/profiteering is so out of control that the hospitals risk public demand for a national single-payer healthcare plan, a fate worse than death for hospital profits and healthcare execs (and something candidate Joe Biden rejected out of hand).
Politicians can’t readily “ensure competition” by funding and building a competing public hospital. And the editorial’s writers don’t propose that the fed dictate hospitals’ prices. Instead, they gently suggest that the culprit hospitals lower their own prices—over 3 years!—and only because the alternative (a public push for single-payer national healthcare) is so onerous to the business class.
Last year, We Do the Work published our own analysis of the non-profit hospital grift.
When It Comes to Inflation, Only Wages Can Be Capped
While Americans struggle with 7% inflation, politicians steer clear of capping prices in every US industry except healthcare staffing. In our capitalist corporate-controlled political system, wages are fair game but prices and profits are not.