RUSH: This is Diane, Metairie, Louisiana, great to have you on the program. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Mr. Limbaugh. Thank you so much for taking my call.
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: I’m a nurse here. I don’t work full time, but in the hospital that I work in, they’re cutting back nurses’ hours, and that’s down to 36 — 40, 36 — and also heard in another hospital in the city that they laid off a lot of nurses. I’ve been asking the managers what’s the reason, and they said it’s because the doctors aren’t being reimbursed in terms of their Medicare reimburses. I have a question as to how… I suspect this has a lot to do with the Obamacare, but if you could explain to me and to others if that’s the case, and if somebody else could call in I’d like to know if this is going on also with the rest of the country because also they’re not hiring new nurses. So nurses graduating from nursing school are not getting jobs.
RUSH: Well, this is not just exclusive to nurses. There are a lot of people graduating not getting jobs, just because of the general state of the economy. But don’t worry about it because Obama’s out there ‘investing’ in a new economy that will not have any of these bad things ever happen to it again. You just gotta be here 10 or 20 years for this to take hold and this reform to work and then everything is going to be fine.
CALLER: Well —
RUSH: Let me ask you, are you represented by a union like the SEIU or anything?
CALLER: No. Thank goodness. I never wanted to be a part of a union because 40 years ago when I became a nurse I saw it coming down the road.
RUSH: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
CALLER: And, in fact, there is… I’m not going to go into details, but I suspect it was a union — I mean some employees in an area hospital were probably union members because when I taught in nursing school a lot of these people were gone when nursing student showed up to the floor.
RUSH: The reason I asked the question is that in addition to the general economy it could well be that the Service Employees International Union is exerting pressure that nonunionized nurses don’t get hired, nonunionized hospitals are going to get creamed and this kind of thing. Look, with these people involved, you never know what’s possible. So you gotta throw that in the mix of things that might be the explanation.
CALLER: That does make sense to push us to join a union. Oh, it would be a devastation. I’ve been against this from the beginning, and I’ve been outspoken about it at work, and there are a lot of people that agree with me but they’re not as outspoken as I am because they’re full time employees. But that does make a lot of sense to me about SEIU. I should probably start being outspoken about that.
RUSH: Well, it’s a sad reality, but it’s one that exists out there today. Any time a question of unionized employees or unionized shop comes up, or nonunionized in your case —
CALLER: Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: — you still have to examine what pressure is being brought to bear on management at these places.
CALLER: We are a right-to-work state. We do have that. A long time ago that passed. So everybody has a right to work. In other words, you don’t have to join a union —
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: — to get a job, thank goodness but it’s pretty scary. It really is. I see, you know, what’s going to happen is that the census is low. That’s what they’re saying. The census is low so they don’t need the nurses as much, so that means the patients are going home a little more sick than usual.
RUSH: What do you mean the census is low?
CALLER: Well, in summertime usually there’s a lot of surgeries because kids — people, you know, can have surgeries, like surgeries on vacation, that sort of thing. But that’s what being told to me in terms of floor load, patient load: The census is low. That’s what’s being told. So my impression is if that’s the case then these people are going home sicker and not getting treated as long as they should be, of course they give the excuse of decrease infection in the hospital.
RUSH: Well, it’s just a precursor of what’s going to be happening everywhere once this Obamacare gets fully implemented.
CALLER: Exactly. That’s exactly right.
RUSH: What you’re talking about is simply lack of funds, right? Not having the money. Patients can’t pay. The hospitals can’t afford to pay it and absorb it. There aren’t enough paying customers. The doctors aren’t being reimbursed, so what do you do? You ration care, you ration the nurses. Hello, Obamacare. It sounds like we’ve got an advanced picture of it right here.