Nurse Shortage Health Care Reform

I started in the nursing field 33 years ago,needless to say the changes I have seen have been nothing but phenomenal.I am not talking about nursing care itself,that will always be the same.For those of you that have no idea what nursing care is I will give you the dictionary definition, a person formally educated and trained in the care of the sick or infirm.Sounds simple and besides the advances in technology it still remains the basic premise.
Now this is where things start to change and not for the good.The idea of taking care of the sick and dying was a very natural and common sense task for a nurse you could actually sit down and talk with the person you were caring for.Hands on care was second nature and there was always lots of time to talk about their concerns.Yes it was a very gratifying career.
Then along come Big Brother (The Feds) and Little Mother (Health Insurance)These two Regulators one who has never run a successful business (Feds) and one that is in it for all the money they can make,denying as much care as they can and getting higher premiums.Also most of these people making decisions in both these industries are not doctors or nurses.
Now the new administration for the government,(by the way they have never run a profitable business!)wants to give everyone health care and really do not care how much they spend doing it.Look at the VA system and Medicare run real well and tell me patient care is the number one priority.The whole point to this is that as soon as they both started in this business nursing care went by the wayside due to the egregious amount of regulations and paperwork that nurses have to keep up with.For example the MDS system that regulates medicare payments to providers has decreased the patient direct care by the RN to approximately 1% the only time the RN sees the patient is when they do the admission.The nurse spends 99% of their time doing paperwork to justify payments to the facility.Another example is home health nursing,which sees the patient at home after a major medical issue.This was to save money for both of these giants.Less time in hospital the more money saved or profit made.Well both of these entities started to require another Form for payment called an Oasis So health care reform did what it was meant to do make money for those that regulate it but take away care for those that need it.Nursing has gone from the hospital room to the board room and we all suffer.Lets get the Government out of this business and reform the insurance providers all with less regulation.Then I could really get back into the field of caring of the sick and infirm!