Another Night...

...and no work. It's gotten way past scary. No one is hiring veteran specialty nurses. They're all hiring the cheaper and inexperienced new grads. My staffer Doris says it's because no one has the money to afford insurance, or partially covered elective surgeries, and those like me who have lost our benefits cannot afford a simple trip to the doctor, much less to the hospital. The hospitals are getting less money and they are paying their staff less. I'm grateful that the kids are all insured. I've always had an amazingly good health plan, free from my employer, right up until I couldn't get my required minimum hours. COBRA is so expensive that it's prohibitive. If I could afford COBRA, I could probably afford to stay home and never work again. The Beloved's health plan sucks and his deductible is high, but he has it. Doris says that her NICU nurses are also hurting for work in numbers that she's never seen. She says the reason for this is that the majority of NICU babies here in this area are Hispanic. A lot of illegal aliens are having their babies at home, so they won't be registered as US citizens. I do know of one friend of a friend who chose to take her US born baby back to Nicaragua with her when she was deported. The only other choice was to leave her newborn behind with family that had been naturalized. While I absolutely abhor our open borders and what anchor babies alone have done to the economy of our country, it seems that our open borders are creating a double edged sword for the very people it's purported to have compassion for. I cannot imagine being in the position of having even an easy labor and normal delivery at home, away from medical assistance, all for the sake of flying under the radar. The risk to both mother and infant just boggles my mind. As a nurse it's a very disturbing trend. As a parent needing to contribute to the family income, the lack of work is extremely disturbing. I've always thought that a career in nursing was a guarantee of employment, however as the cancer of socialism sinks it's teeth deeper into the flesh of America's soft underbelly, it's only going to get worse. I have to ask people if this is the "Hope and Change" they were looking for.