Letter: Labor shortage in health care due to greed

Saturday, Oct. 21, 2000 | 2:57 a.m.

A recent Sun article titled "Need for nurses" could have been titled "Health care moguls create labor shortage."

How is that? Hypothetically, let's say I own a business that provides lobbyists to organizations such as the American Hospital Association. Then, let's say that I decide to improve the "bottom line" with systematic cutbacks in the number of lobbyists I employ.

In turn, I increase the workload of the remaining lobbyists without increasing their benefits or salary. I reward their hard work with mandatory overtime. I ignore the increase in job-related injuries, decreasing morale and increased errors. My profits skyrocket but my pool of lobbyists decreases, as they leave their jobs out of frustration. No problem, I say. I'll just replace them with cheaper, less qualified people whom I'll call "lobbyist assistants."

I even begin to lay off senior lobbyists who have the tenacity to work in such a "difficult environment." When my customers complain that the quality of my services have plummeted, I say its because there's a "shortage" of qualified lobbyists. I assure my customers that I'm "scrambling to fill the void" and that although "not optimal," services "are adequate."

After all, these customers of mine are just not sophisticated enough to understand the real cause of this problem. I'll just continue to muddle their minds with numerous excuses regarding system complexities. Hopefully they won't notice that there never seems to be a shortage of CEOs.

NINA CARTER Registered nurse

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