Would Universal Healthcare lower the wages of nurses, doctors...?

[maveric]

I work in a hospital and one of my nursing colleagues and I were discussing UH. She is a repug and stated that if UH were to exist in this country, it would drive down the wages and benefits of nurses because there would be no practical way to pay for it. I told her that Canada has UH and I dint see Canadians crossing the border to work in healthcare in the US. She then told me that when she was a nurse in Seattle she worked with flocks of Canadians that work here due to low nursing wages in Canada.
So my questions are as follows:

1.Would nursing wages and benefits go down?
2.How would we pay for UH?
3.Are nurses wages so low in Canada that they are crossing the
border to work in the US to make ends meet?

Can anyone help me with some points for argument.

[burrowowl]

1. No

because more money would go to nurses, etc. and not to CEO's, privatization overhead, etc.
Here in NM, my father is in the hospital at this point, the hospital has cut down so much that it is a good thing he has 3 daughters that are taking shifts to help out and keep an eye on things with the cut in nursing staff. The hospital had just been sold again and as one nurse said, even the food quality has gone down.
In France, I paid slightly higher base taxes and had good health care, good rooads, good education, etc. I had some nurse friends in France and they were satisfied (and doctors in France make HOUSE calls).
Here, I earn less and found that with health insurance, FICA, etc., my taxes are higher than in France with a higher salary. The tax burden on the middle and lower-middle class in the U$ is getting worse and worse.
Haven't run across any nurses from Canada but have from: Armenia, Virgin Islands, Romania, etc. Some don't even speak English very well which is not as much of a problem as not reading English too well.

[Sugarbleus]

2. Thanks for that info Burrow...the answer to the question for me is

I don't know.........because WE AREN'T GOING TO GET IT IN OUR LIFETIMES. :(

The peeps with all the money will fight tooth and nail to avoid that proposition, unfortunately. The ones with the big bucks won't part with it..it's their God. They don't give a flying fig for human rights or any social reform.

Sorry to hear about your dad Burrow. My best wishes for your family.

[Frederic Bastiat]

13. FYI hundreds of Canadian doctors leave for the US each year

I doubt they are running away from the high wages in Canada. Provinces like Alberta have resorted to importing doctors from South Africa. Same goes for nurses.

[readmylips]

3. My niece a contract nurse....

makes $35.00/hr through a private agency that sends her to different states. The problems is that she doesn't have health insurance. Even if she got paid $100./hr, she cannot afford the health insurance and liability insurance (must be bonded). Her husband is an electrician but has been on an off work. It's a big hardship for the family when she's gone from the home for 3 or 4 months on a nurshing assignment. Most hospitals today, don't want to hire full time nurses. It's a way to avoid paying health insurance. When my niece is sick, she has to work no matter what, which worries her because she could make her patience sicker or even herself if her ammune system is low and catches a sickness from her patience. Her greatest worry is health insurance.

[AmyStrange]

4. Do most nurses get health care as part of their benes...

I don't know nothing about healthcare.

Right now 60% of the people pay for 100% of the healthcare, which raises the cost of healthcare for the 60%. With 100% paying, the price would spike at first with all the regularly uninsured folks taking advantage (which means nurses would be really invaluable then), but with a co-pay except for emergency cases, that would slow down cost enough so healthcare cost would atleast stay the same for a lot longer if there weren't UH. Labor cost would even out for awhile and this would give inflation a chance to catch up with...

I don't have a clue really,


Dave (AmyStrange.com) Ayotte
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[Bridget Burke]

10. If they have a full-time, permanent position....

Yes. Although they've probably seen benefits decline, as they have generally for all the hospital employees.

Many do work "temp"--high hourly wages, long hours, no benefits.

[SanchoPanza]

5. Well...

It would certainly drive down the salaries of HMO and Insurance Company executives, forcing them to find another way to make millions gambling on the health of others. But to answer your questions...

*1.Would nursing wages and benefits go down?*
There are a thousand reasons why wages for nurses could be lower in Canada, and simply because that country has Universal Health COVERAGE while the U.S. does not should not be taken as a causal relationship. Perhaps the nurses worked in the NW U.S. so they didn't have to pay higher tax rates in Canada.

*2.How would we pay for UH?*
As a nation we're paying more for private insurance than any country with a national coverage system, principally for two reasons:

- Over the past few decades the insurance industries have made some extremely poor investment choices, and thus have had to raise the cost of healthcare premiums. For those of you who dont know, insurance companies of all stripes operate a lot like banks. They take the money from premiums and invest it, using the returns to pay for claims and overhead. Though this is generally true of all insurance industries, in terms of the craptacular investments they've made, it is particularly true in healthcare. In the malpractice sector it should be considered an outright scandal, and is the real reason malpractice premiums are hitting over $100k.

- A long list of predatory practices by HMOs. Automatic denial of initial claims, conflicting policy language where a patient can assume a service is covered but in reality isn't, etc, etc. The result is people often being put into serious financial jeapordy due to any catastrophic care costs.

By all accounts we would be paying less for coverage through a public system and getting rid of the private beauracracies, price gouging, and mismanagement. That's my favorite argument from conservatives: there is no beauracracy or mismanagement in private enterprise! Every corporation runs at 100% efficiency!

*3.Are nurses wages so low in Canada that they are crossing the
border to work in the US to make ends meet?*
There is no reason for me to think so. No offense intended, but your colleague could be a friggin' liar. People like to make up stories to give their ideological causes an anecdotal reality. Hell, people make radio, television, and literary careers out of such a practice. Best bet is to check out the facts for yourself.

[maveric]

6. Thank you Sancho and all!

I do think that this woman is a "friggin liar", using no facts to back up her claims and arguments. I found out last night that she is also somewhat of a white supremacist stating that JFK and LBJ game people of color too much freedom, and mexicans should not be allowed to cross the border, ever. BTW she is a Polish immigrant who just recently gain her citizenship through marriage. Sigh...
I will use these point when we debate.
Thank you all.

[BR_Parkway]

7. Here's a starting point

http://www.nursefriendly.com/nursing/nursing.salaries.salary.paychecks.nurses.pay.htm

[Hekate]

8. We ALREADY pay for universal health care: we just aren't getting it!

That's the thing most people don't understand yet. Health care is run as a for-profit industry all along the line, and whether you are a worker or an employer, you pay and pay and pay, with the biggest profits going to the insurers. I feel guilty saying this, but I think the truth is that it really has finally ended up being too much for many employers to afford. What I don't get about the recent grocery workers' strike is this: if Von's and Ralph's et al. were finding health insurance burdensome, why didn't THEY form a union and use their considerable clout to go after the health industry instead of squeezing their workers? Woulda made more sense.

It's crazy that a nurse wouldn't have health insurance of her own, but it's easy to see how that could happen. Same as in other jobs: the bosses construct the job so that the worker is less-than-full-time, and make health benes contingent on being employed full-time. Outsource that category of worker to a temp agency, and of course temp workers don't get health benes. Nurses can end up being freeway flyers like a lot of college teachers: doing part-time work in several places in order to make a living, and not building anything toward retirement either.

Maybe we'll get a humane and workable system going before the oil's gone and the sea rises...

Hekate

[JCMach1]

14. You can have a real system... I pay 0 dollars for my healthcare

with a tiny deductible for prescriptions (which include ever over the counter prescriptions).

So, if the Dr. says you need Advil, you get it!

The care I have had here in the UAE is as good or better than what I have experienced in the States.

You want to give working people a HUGE tax break... let's get a Universal payer system going with the top % of the tax going to the wealthiest.

Can you imagine how much extra money this would put in the average person's pocket + having the security of insurance?

We could have REAL 6% GDP growth or better in this country.

The cash would actually go to people who consume... not the insurance companies.

Just a thought... if I had stayed in the states, my health insurance would have been $1000+ a month for crappy family coverage. This would have been after my employer's contribution. I simply would not have been able to afford it.

[morgan2]

9. really an irrelevant question

wages would be as high as the nursing unions could negotiate with the administration of the health care system. Could be higher, could be lower.

[Florida_Geek]

11. Not a good table but

http://www.cna-nurses.ca/_frames/resources/statsframe.htm

One thing to note is the required hours. A forty hour week is 2080 hours per year.

[JanMichael]

12. Here's a fun thought: There were tons of Canucks RECRUITED to Seattle...

...for the tech boom. Probably making all sorts of use of our healthcare system and making gobs of money on a hobby. Probably all clammering to go to India now though....Anyway I'm a little cautious with these "I've got a friend that says..." threads. All of the facts are rarely considered and context is whitewashed.

In answer to your question though: Perhaps some high income specialists would take a little bump but if you look at all US wages most (As in the VAST majority) Americans earn under $200,000 so my advice to the newly minted Joe Sixpack would be to suck it up and play ball.

[leesa]

15. Those are the standard fear-provoking RW talking points

They all say the same thing. The reality is that physicians wages have been cut fairly routinely over the last 5 years or so and nurses wages have never been great if you aren't unionized. What is happening now is definitely NOT working.

There have been posts before on DU showing that those countries with single-payer systems actually pay less for better health care. We are ranked 16th in quality of healthcare in the industrialized world. Terrible. The HMOs and privitization of healthcare have been a disaster.