Regular readers of this blog won’t be assurprised as California policymakers were to learn that artificially increasing demand for something, say nurses, will make it more expensive.
A new study in Health Affairs examined the effects of California’s 2004 legislation to institute minimum-nurse-staffing ratios in acute care hospitals finds that wages for nurses in California increased as much as 12 percentage points more than in other states.
So the legislation cost a lot more than projected. In addition, “there are as yet unanswered questions about whether the minimum-nurse-staffing legislation met the policy goal of improving quality of care.”
Higher cost but no better care – isn’t that the problem with health care in America?
