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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   25227 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023

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• (Related tidbit from outside this particular hearing: Senator Bill Cassidy, Bernie Sanders’ Republican counterpart on the Senate HELP Committee, has complained that we have a shortage of trained nurses partially because many states require nursing colleges to be taught by nurses with masters degrees, who are few in number and already mostly working as practitioners. I can buy this because in my experience looking into other healthcare issues, state level regulations often do make federal laws go much less far. For example pricing transparency rules don’t really matter when states allow hospitals to be monopolies.)

• Democrats responded that the rule provides $75 million in grants to train nurse aids, and also pointed out that Democrats repeatedly have tried to boost federal spending to help with this kind of training and hiring but Republicans were opposed soooo.

So the states restrict training more than is federally required and the response is to give them more federal money so the state can get out of the problem they caused? Seems wrong.

It does, but the Republicans, including Sen Cassidy, aren't proposing addressing state level restrictions either, so it's the only solution on the table at the moment. I don't know exactly how the grants will be distributed, but if they can raise wages for nursing college teaching positions, it can also be a way of luring more talent there.

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