No More Incumbents Blog

I read an article the other day about two concepts.  One was the mobile population in China.  China has a mobile population of a quarter of a billion people that do not have permanent homes.  They travel from one job or contract labor job to the next all over the country.  Imagine a population the size of the US constantly moving and in flux.

Then I read a different article talking about a new change in the nursing industry.  Nursing history has changed dramatically over the years, but possibly more dramatically in the last 2 decades than any other time.

Implementing a new system, or even political consultants recommend to work for a political season or as long as a campaign has the money, there is a new niche or profession being filled for travel nurse consultants.  These were consultants their very loosely as they are not consultants but nurses that are working on a contract and hired to travel to work in a different area of the United States.  These are typically not full-time or long-term positions, but they do require a temporary move over long distances.

The concept of travel nursing is not exactly a new one.  Those people think of travel nursing and think of a nursemaid assisting an elderly person on a cruise or an airplane or something like that.  They don’t necessarily think that if they show up to a hospital tomorrow, at the emergency room nurse helping them might actually be temporarily relocated from a different state working on a six or seven month contract.

Healthcare is playing a very large role in the election for president in 2008, and many of the candidates are working on health-care reform concepts that are over a decade old.  They’re fixing the system from the 90s and they’re not looking at the system as it exists today in many regards.  Hillary Clinton is not the only one guilty of this, Brock Obama and John Edwards both have proposals on the table seem to have their roots dated back to the 90s.  Everyone seems to be focused on trying to fix the system has existed then and do so in a way that salt the dilemma that Hillary Clinton ran into the first time.

However the state of healthcare is changed dramatically in that time in bringing a solution to the table today time for 10 years ago is probably not going to solve anything.

Mobile Voting

anyway I digress from a topic just a bit, if you consider the movements of people in China and even in the United States, you might see a future where people are unable to register to vote in the state have been be living in one election comes around.  This is typically handled with absentee ballots, but consider mobile professionals could relocate almost anywhere in register anywhere they choose.  If you live no more than two or three months in any given city or state, you could are you registered to vote in the city or state of your choice.

If the United States mobile population of professionals increases even to a percentage level about China were 25% of our population becomes mobile on as he could see a major shift in the way that politics and elections play out in the United States.  Red and blue states could change color from month to month based on the shift of mobile populations.  Elections could become something akin to a cakewalk or musical chairs, with a last-place mobile professional population stops ends up deciding the election go to sleep.

Last month, in a combined military campaign in the rugged terrain of Tora Bora in August, United States and Afghani forces are rumored to have almost captured Bin Laden. The campaign, which failed to net Bin Laden and Zawahiri, claimed the lives of many Al Qaeda operatives and Taliban fighters.

Tora Bora is a region in Afghanistan renowned for its rugged inhospitable terrain and has been known to be the originally hideout of Bin Laden and his operatives after the September 11th attacks which claimed the lives of thousands that day. An official interviewed by NBC News cited that it is “possible” that Bin Laden may have been there at the time of the campaign.

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There is an existing major void in the ranks of nursing professionals that is growing rapidly.  Politicians such as Hillary Clinton and John Edwards have both offered up a universal health care plan that would make health care affordable, but neither really does anything to address the need to promote more people to enter into a nursing career.  Neither has done anything that would alleviate the nursing demand that will only increase as more people swell the ranks of retirees in the US.

Canada, our neighbor to the north, has a universal health care plan, but they too have a nursing shortage.  Making health care accessible for people that can not afford it won’t amount to a hill of beans if people show up for their free health care and do not have nurses and doctors to care for them.

“Thanks for Nothing!” will be the quote of the day aimed at Hillary or Edwards or anyone else that brings in Universal Health Care without a Universal Health Care professional recruiting movement.

The politicians need to include a movement in their plans to help swell the ranks of medical professionals.  We need a rapid way to get people into the medical profession, trained and capable of dealing with the sick, aging and more.  We need something that utilizes all of our resources from existing nursing school infrastructure to technology through online nursing education options to ‘hands on’ residence training.

MOTC - Medical Officer Training Corp

Maybe we need something that emulates the ROTC program in colleges, except it would not be military in nature.  It would be system that helps to fund school for people interested in becoming nurses and requires a 6-8 year commitment after they complete school.  Maybe even an extra couple years of commitment if the future nurses pick up a specialty in areas where more help is needed.

The Democratic debate this a week ago are still being talked about.  They featured the Democrats in what can best be described as “Dancing with the Candidates.” Pressed with a litany of questions involving both foreign and domestic policy the performance of Sen. Clinton was truly inspiring.

Beginning her answers with laughs, sighs and contorted faces, Sen. Clinton danced around several issues including but not limited to social security, Israeli security and the war. Tim Russert, the moderator, appeared to be visibly frustrated with the candidates especially Sen. Clinton as she danced around his questions with a political grace reminiscent of husband Bill.

She may not be giving up any real estate in the polls, but she is also not winning any hearts and minds, and this shallow stance isn’t the type of thing to get her base motivated and mobilized.  It will however, prove to be ample fodder for Giulliani and the Democrats as they try and prove her to be something slightly short of Osama Bin Laden.