Paying a nurse $125k instead of $80k is not going to appreciably increase the cost of healthcare for any individual patient when the radiologist makes $500k, the surgeon makes $750k, the charge nurse makes $200k, and you get billed $35 for a Tylenol.
From a Canadian stand point you American nurses are already highly paid. My brother works in the US and was recently thinking of coming back to work closer to where he grew up. The best deal he could get here was $20usd less then what he makes there. So on top of making $20 more then a nurse here he is also making it in USD. He is making huge amounts of cash as a nurse down there. How much more do nurses need?
Maybe in California, but most of the US is not union and most nurses do not make anywhere close to this. $30-40/hr is much more typical. That salary is far about the top 10% of nursing salaries (which is $106k).
Nurse salaries are a vanishingly small portion of health care costs. They're largely a function of the difficulty in finding qualified nurses. It's unlikely that will change anytime soon.
Americans also consume a lot more healthcare. And doctors and nurses earn 2x more than in other countries. An NHS nurse makes something like $33k a year. In the US it's going to be $60-70k before overtime.
I agree with you that in the current situation of 1 to 2 years, my choice does not matter.
> The cost of a nurse is conditioned on the licensed supply, not the willingness of Joe Programmer to do it for $800,000.
The supply of a nurse is conditioned on cash flow prospects. If nursing paid more and had a history of having decent pay to lifestyle ratio, then there would have been more supply of nurses.
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