That “bad side,” according to nurses who spoke with me (Amie Rivers), is relentless cost-cutting at the expense of workers and patients: Nurses have seen their pay shift differential cut, meaning they’re working more hours for less money. Longtime nurses get burned out, leave, and aren’t replaced—meaning patient wait times go up, increasing frustration and angry outbursts.

Carpenter recalled a time a colleague was assaulted by a patient and broke their back. UnityPoint, she said, disciplined them when they were unable to return to work because of the pain.

“That type of stuff is the stuff that’s super disappointing, because I thought better of this company,” she said.

Even patient equipment has become substandard, said Dawn Balek, an overnight recovery room nurse at Iowa Methodist Medical Center with nearly 18 years of nursing experience.

“They don’t ask us which would work better; all of a sudden, we get new IV bags,” Balek told me. “We go to the cheapest tubing, and it falls out … We’re constantly telling them there’s a problem; they don’t care, ’cause they’re saving money.”

There is more at the link. Here is hoping that the nurses have a big turnout and that they become represented so they can get some resolution on their issues. Looking in from the outside, it definitely looks as if corporate health care is putting profit way ahead of care and while the nurses are losers in this situation, patients are the biggest losers.

This also gives me another thought. Of the many evils promoted by the right perhaps one of the most evil is for profit health care. To see that one of the nurses demands is simply for adequate equipment and staffing makes me wonder how far for profit health care will go to squeeze out that profit. Certainly this is not good for patients.

Which leads me to think that at some point the United States, once the shining light on the hill, especially in science, has to join the modern world and offer single payer health care to its citizens. Things like adequate equipment and staffing should not be negotiation items.

Single payer would be so much cheaper and would free us up to do the work of America rather than creating a multi-tiered society based on things like access to health care. Humanity over profit!