Cap Nurse Pay: Hospitals’ Wish Is Congress’s Command
Two weeks ago, 200 US House members (both Dems and Republicans, including two members of the so-called Squad) sent a letter to Jeffrey Zeints, Biden’s covid czar, asking for a federal investigation into nurse staffing agencies’ pricing practices. The legislators complain that nurse staffing agencies are pandemic profiteering, and they want federal agencies to step in and stop it. The letter’s writers, under the guise of ensuring “competition” and “protecting patients,” want the feds to investigate healthcare staffing agencies and cap the amount staffing agencies can charge hospitals for travel nurses. (The American Hospital Association, the hospitals’ lobbying organization, undoubtedly wrote the letter; AHA sent its own letter a year ago and again a few days after this one.)
Across the country, for more than two years, travel and staff nurses busted their asses, risked their and their families’ lives and health, and singlehandedly kept the US healthcare system from imploding. Their reward? A sneak attack on their pay directed by their hospital employers and US congressional lawmakers doing the hospitals’ bidding.
Nurses see through the plan and are having none of the hospitals’ bullshit.
Cap travel agency rates = cap travel nurse pay = cap ALL nurses’ pay
Within a week of the infamous letter, a new Facebook group, United Nurses March, started planning a massive nurse march on Washington. Within days, 176,000 nurses joined.
FACT: if hospitals paid appropriate wages and improved nurse-to-patient ratios, they wouldn’t lose nursing staff and have to rely on staffing agencies.
FACT: hospitals can match travel nurse rates and put the staffing agencies out of business. They aren’t gonna do that. It would cut into profits and executive pay.
Nurses Say F**k You, Cap CEO Pay!
Becker’s Hospital Review, Feb. 8, 2022
Both staff and travel nurses are furious. Check out the nurse posts on a Reddit message board. A sampling:
What do the CEOs even do? Ours makes $4+ million/year not including bonuses. If he disappears tomorrow, would anyone notice?
We have a CEO?
CEOs are sociopaths. . . . They have one goal, money.
…We probably only have to eat one really rich person to get the rest in line. I mean...if we can get the EMS guys to fire up the BBQ, I'll git in on that.
I always find it bizarre how on weekends the parking ramps are empty and the hospital runs without a hitch. Then Monday comes and 5000 extra staff show up who do nothing
C-suites’ whole job is to figure out how hellish they can make your working conditions before they create a problem for themselves, and it looks like that bubble has finally popped
… Senior administrative positions like CEOs are expensive cancers…administrators as a whole are a cancer [that] plagues all aspects of society.
Our CEO walks around the hospital all day looking for someone to fire. She also reviews security tapes to see if anyone is doing anything that she doesn’t approve of in the hallways.
Holy shit. I hate her for you.
No one would want to be a CEO if the rest of the population held them accountable for their bad treatment of their workers. It's getting a little french revolutiony in here.
We run society, not the rich. And, according to the CDC, we only need to strike for 10 days to shut the whole economy down and demolish the owner class. [CDC said nurses with covid could return to work in only 5 days implying a 10-days quarantine could collapse the system]
Who’s Jeffrey Zeints, the Letter Recipient?
Zeints, Biden’s coronavirus response coordinator, has a net worth is $90 million. He’s an investor, former Obama economic advisor, former member of Facebook’s board of directors, and former COO and CEO of two consulting firms that went public netting him millions. He has no background in medicine or public health. He doesn’t give two shits about nurses’ wages or patient care, only about hospitals’ profits.
Hospital Execs Know What Nurses Want—Therapy for Burnout
Nurses demanding higher pay and safe staffing ratios aren't getting either, and are quitting hospitals in droves. What do hospital executives say nurses need to improve retention? According to a survey last week in Becker’s Hospital Review, not money or safe staffing ratios. (Only executives need money to get motivated—and lots of it.) Nurses would rather have:
Joy and satisfaction
Flexible schedules, psychological well-being, career growth and meaningful work
An inclusive culture
“Elimination of silos, feudalism and random acts of microaggressions against peers and colleagues” [what?]
Wellness programs that address burnout
A workplace culture of ownership
Cultural transformation and the values of a modern workforce [huh?]
Resources for self-care
Self-value
“Strong clinical-administrative dyad leadership structures so decisions made make sense from both the financial/operations perspective and from a clinical perspective” [consultant-speak bafflegab]
Hospital Execs/Congress Pour Gasoline on a Healthcare Fire
In normal times and in the middle of a global health crisis, hospitals can’t function without nurses. Even so, they’ll cap nurse pay and risk a full-system meltdown to protect their profits and exec compensation. Hard to believe. Not hard to believe: Congress takes orders from healthcare corporations.
The US for-profit, $4 trillion/year healthcare system has been a pot of gold for hospitals, insurers, pharma, consultants, software companies, and healthcare execs. We have the world’s leading covid death rate to prove it.
Time to pay the people who do actual health care the money they’re so worth. Time for worker rebellion. Nurses, lead the way!