All Your Nurse Are Belong to US

The New York Times today has a piece by Celia W. Dugger on a Senate proposal to allow more foreign nurses to enter our country. The plan, sponsored by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS), is part of the all-encompassing immigration bill being loudly debated both in Congress and in public.

The Times headline for the article, "U.S. Plan to Lure Nurses May Hurt Poor Nations", is indicative of the publication's bias against the plan, which Dugger seems to share. The main point of the story seems to be that opening our borders to much-needed nurses will deprive nations such as the Philippines of their much-need nurses and that the proposal is therefore wrong.

I think that the focus of the article is somewhat misplaced. Here's something for concern:

The nurse proposal has strong backing from the American Hospital Association, which reported in April that American hospitals had 118,000 vacancies for registered nurses. The federal government predicted in 2002 that the accelerating shortfall of nurses in the United States would swell to more than 800,000 by 2020.

Staggering, huh? So the Senate proposal is a bit of a no-brainer, especially in a nation where healthcare costs have become a top issue in public debate. (Funny how this news item hasn't gotten more attention; it pertains to both healthcare costs AND immigration)

Of course, nurses already in the U.S. oppose the plan, since more nurses lead to lower pay. So whose side should we take? I wholeheartedly take the side of the patients, who want better and cheaper care. And that means more nurses. Sorry, nurses.

But to reply to the headline: if foreign nations wish to keep nurses at home, they'll just have to do what we did: create an incentive scheme that encourages nurses to stay. Or train more nurses (after all, even the departed ones send money back). Call it blind optimism, but I think that hospitals (at least the private ones) will find a way to do so.