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[quote=Anonymous]Yes, it's absolutely headed for a crash. (And I follow that sub reddit as well). I'm a nurse for 25 years who no longer works bedside.  But I've seen the inside of Emergency Departments and hospitals due to an elderly family member.  Then, I've also experienced having kids with a mental health crisis (when I had terrible insurance) and significant physical trauma (when luckily I had great insurance).

There is no sense in which insurance serves the greater good, or the patients who pay for it, specifically.  It exists TO MAKE MONEY.  And it succeeds in that.  Sometimes maybe someone gets their treatment on time because the insurance company covers it, and then sometimes they DON'T get their treatment, and they die, but in either scenario, the insurance company makes bank.

Administrators make bank.

Nurses are spread very thin, and hear at every turn "I'll sue you" or threats of violence against them from patients or patients' families.  Even back when I was a bedside nurse, it was a good day when I got to use the bathroom and eat lunch. It's tough to focus for 12.5 hours of juggled chaos, when you can't eat or use the bathroom.

There used to be more adjunct staff, like patient care techs.  You used to be able to enter a patient's room without having to answer a hospital cell phone attached to your hip, as soon as it rang.

I deeply appreciate those nurses still working inpatient.  You are the reason sometimes the hospital functions. I also deeply appreciate physicians, who have a terrifyingly high risk of suicide which gives you some indication of what it's like to work as a physician (maybe especially in med school and in early residency, not sure when the risk is highest), the respiratory therapists who run to vents and to rapid response calls and sometimes actually have time to talk to patients, and extra especially, the front desk staff (the first people to hear about any problem and the "face" of the care for many people) and the very hard-working, highly skilled, underpaid patient care techs.

Please, do something before you have a mom in the hospital.  Fix this crazy expensive mess.[/quote]

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