A young woman Lariuchenik accused Obama of hatching a “Nazi plan” like Hitler’s plan to get rid of the incapable and infirm. Frank’s rejoinder was say he would return to his ethnic roots (I’m embarrassed to say she was fairly clearly a young Jewish “intellectual”) and ask her which planet she normally inhabits.

Average salary for Registered Nurse 3+ years in US: $47110-$59600
Average salary for equivalent nurse in Switzerland: $51852-$63889
Average salary for all nurses in Ireland: $78,571

(sources: Allied Physicians (US), ILO (Switzerland) & The Sunday Business Post (Ireland))

According to Nursing Pay, British salaries for an established Registered Nurse range from $36917-$92593, described by David Cameron recently, and correctly, as a “disgrace.”

Medical staff are imported into the richer countries of Europe from the rest of the world a) because there is a massive shortage of local trained staff and, b) because rich countries usually pay better. It is a matter of embarrassment to Britain that there are more Malawian doctors in Greater Manchester than the whole of Malawi.

nurse’s salaries are the single biggest operational cost item in a hospital’s budget. Where do you think the bean-counter’s are going to look first?

This is true in every country in the OECD according to their reports; the US is no exception. So when the baby boomers retire, The US will have to import a great many nurses, just like everyone else and maybe pay them better than they do now.

And the embarass by the American Nurses Assoc. of the Obama plan is especially savagely ironic, as once in thrall, in effect, to the government as civil servants, a cap on their salaries will soon inevitably follow as cost containment measures will follow as night follows day. Hospitals are all about nurses, not physicians. As the single 24/7/365 health-care delivery staffing mechanism, nurse’s salaries are the single biggest operational cost item in a hospital’s budget. Where do you think the bean-counter’s are going to look first?

So–if one want’s to guarantee a dramatic worsening of an already existing physician and nursing shortage in the US just implement Obamacare–and then look around and ask just who is going to provide quality health-care when the current generational cohort “bulge in the snake” of baby-boomer nurses and physicians retire in droves shortly (as they are just beginning to–I am 65, born in ‘44) and the “best and the brightest” eschew socialized medicine for more lucrative and less physically demanding/mentally draining jobs.

Actually, none. The US has no official language, though the vast majority speak English.

Of course he hasn’t been to Switzerland, the fact he thinks its ethnically homogeneous is a dead giveway. The French, Italian and German speaking Swiss’ would find that a very interesting observation.

To annoy you?

Reagan formally became a Republican in 1962, but he had supported the Republican candidates for president in 1952, 1956 and 1960.

Have you ever been to Switzerland? How many official languages does the US have?

Not quite, I admit, on the same scale of disingenuity as claiming that because the Republicans voted more for civil rights legislation initiated by LBJ, that the Democratic party remains the party of the KKK. A little matter of the mass defection of Southern whites to the Republic, Strom Thurmond, David Duke and all, exposes the absurdity of that one.

“The costs have increased in the last 10 years by 50 to 60 percent,” says Roland Brunner, a banker from Baden”

The costs of healthcare per person in the USA have risen 66.9% during the same period. The data for the States comes from the US Department of Health and Human Services, not the anecdotal evidence of a banker in Switzerland; in fact it rose by 47.0% (Swiss Federal Office of Public Health).

As it happens, Swiss medical care is rather expensive by European standards, healthcare per person being as much as 66.3% of the cost of what it is in the States.