With the aging of America, it’s well known that there will be a shortage of registered nurses and nursing assistants to take care of the population. It’s predicted that the shortage of nurses in California will climb to 80,000 by 2015. California has just 653 registered nurses employed per 100,000 people.
One of the problems is a lack of qualified faculty to teach at nursing schools. California was forced to turn away 23,000 qualified applicants from nursing programs during 2008-2009. And this week Humboldt State University announced plans to discontinue the school’s nursing program because of financial concerns and inability to retain nursing faculty. Shortage of nurses and closing nursing programs — now there’s a big disconnect.
In prior posts, DrRich introduced his readers to Ezekiel Emanuel, M.D., Ph.D., brother of Rahm, eminent medical ethicist, and one of the White House’s chief advisers on healthcare policy. Dr. Emanuel was one of the authors of that recent paper in the Annals of Internal Medicine which admonished American physicians that resistance is futile. He has also famously called upon American physicians to abandon the obsolete medical ethics expressed in the Hippocratic Oath.
The reason the ideas (and pronouncements) of Dr. Emanuel are important is that he presumably will be a major “decider” in determining who will serve on the GOD panels, and how those panels will operate to advance his (and Mr. Obama’s) program of healthcare reform.
So, before we leave Dr. Emanuel to his important duties, let us take one more pass at the views he has expressed, regarding the direction of American healthcare, which we can expect to see manifested in government guidelines and policies in the coming years. In particular, and especially relevant to the subject of this blog, let us view how Dr. Emanuel would direct the rationing of our healthcare. Read more »
One of the more effective criticisms of the health reform law (Affordable Care Act, or ACA) is that it hurts Medicare. It also is wrong.
Effective, in that it has been widely reported that seniors are more likely to express negative views of the ACA than other age groups. (Although the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Drew Altman, citing the group’s most recent tracking polls, writes that seniors’ opposition to health reform “is at least somewhat over played.”)
Effective, but wrong: The ACA actually helps Medicare in three important ways. Read more »
Japan is completely different from the United States. But it’s exactly the same.
I’m talking about health care, of course.
Japan is a country of about 130 million people, and one of the richest countries on Earth. They enjoy a system of universal health care coverage, and some of the best doctors in the world. But there are problems.
The country is is straining under the twin burdens of an aging population and rising health care costs. At some point in the next two decades, retirees will outnumber active workers. Medical expenses per person have almost doubled since the 1990s and continue to rise. In a country with little immigration and low birth rates, it’s a bad combination. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at See First Blog*
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