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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> no price any real person encounter anywhere in their daily life is actually determined in any meaningful way by "supply" or "demand"

Case in point.

> how every hospital is short staffed and desperate for nurses (high demand), while we also constantly law nurses off or reduce hours (and nursing has consistently-fixed low salaries, despite the shortages)

How many paying patients are they turning away on account of this supposed shortage?

There isn't a national nurse shortage. Nurses are being overworked. And in some regions, there are shortages, though that's out of an inability to pay traveling nurse rates.

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> How many paying patients are they turning away on account of this supposed shortage?

That's not how it works. Generally speaking, any publicly funded hospital in the US must take patients by law, they can not turn away patients except under very specific circumstances.

> There isn't a national nurse shortage

Literally everyone disagrees with you:

- The New York Times - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/15/us/hospital-nursing-short... - University of St Augustine - https://www.usa.edu/blog/nursing-shortage/ - University of California SF - https://scienceofcaring.ucsf.edu/patient-care/nursing-shorta... - Center for American Progress - https://www.americanprogress.org/about-us/ - McKinsey and Co - https://www.hcinnovationgroup.com/policy-value-based-care/st... - Both the US Democratic Party and US Republican Party - https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/347826-bo...

> that's out of an inability to pay traveling nurse rates.

If you pay extra to import a nurse (traveling nurses) you remove them from the area they were previously. That's great, but it's not a fix for a shortage, that's just relocating the shortage somewhere else.

And, if they're short, why aren't they able to pay traveling nurse rates? Medical revenues are at an all time high, prices too. There's no reason a hospital couldn't pay higher nursing rates, they just choose not to, because again, that figure is not determined by supply or demand.

> any publicly funded hospital in the US must take patients by law, they can not turn away patients except under very specific circumstances

Not all nurses are employed at hospitals. I said paying patient, but I should have said deniable. Someone seeking out the sorts of care hospitals start denying when they face an actual emergency.

> everyone disagrees with you

Oh, I've seen the meme. I'm just casting it a bit more cynically. Nobody wants to pay nurses more. So we need more nurses, whether out of nursing school or through immigration.

> if they're short, why aren't they able to pay traveling nurse rates

They did [1]! When they needed them. Because there was demand for them. When there wasn't, they didn't.

> no reason a hospital couldn't pay higher nursing rates, they just choose not to, because again, that figure is not determined by supply or demand

This is how supply and demand work. They're not paying more because they don't have to.

[1] https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/nursing/the-complexity...

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