4 ms·

I found this quote from the article a bit confusing: "wiping out parts of the economy where women dominate: retail businesses, restaurants and health care." Sp

I found this quote from the article a bit confusing: "wiping out parts of the economy where women dominate: retail businesses, restaurants and health care." Specifically the claim that the health care industry was wiped out. Am I missing something? Anecdotally, I have friends who became travelling nurses during the pandemic, going from hotspot to hotspot under contract making SV software engineer money. ACA enrollments appear way up this year and insurance carriers all appear to be doing well. Hospital staff are definitely being stretched but hourly workers are looking at more money as a result. I know initially hospitals cleared most elective surgeries, leaving surgeons + their support staff in a pickle, but all the surgeons I know are back to business as usual on both the east and west coast. I suppose admin staff who'd otherwise be sitting at the desk answering phones for more typical primary care operations might've been squeezed as well, but I've been making ophthalmologist, dentist, GP appointments throughout the past year talking to humans so that doesn't seem to match either.

foxyv 6y ago
A huge part of the health care economy is elective procedures which have been severely impacted. This has reduced income for these procedures and hospitals are instead being overloaded with costly but non-lucrative emergency care. A lot of health care staff are being furloughed. NPR did a piece on it: https://www.npr.org/2020/05/08/852435761/as-hospitals-lose-revenue-thousands-of-health-care-workers-face-furloughs-layoff https://www.npr.org/2020/05/08/852435761/as-hospitals-lose-r...
- albroland 6y ago
  Thank you for the link. This definitely mirrors what I had seen last year and if that didn't come across it was a failure on my part. That said, I believe a lot of those furloughed employees have since returned: https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/workforce/9-hospitals-bringing-back-furloughed-employees.html https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/workforce/9-hospitals-... It's really hard to find any hard data about rehirings, hence my wondering and wild speculations based on personal experience ;)
fred_is_fred 6y ago
I visited my GP in July. She had a 10% hours cut along with a 10% pay cut on top. People during COVID really stopped going to check-ups and pretty much all elective things were cancelled and that's the bread and butter for them. Even ER visits were down for heart attacks then - people are not using medical care at the rate they were before. That was especially true last spring and summer.

foxyv 6y ago

A huge part of the health care economy is elective procedures which have been severely impacted. This has reduced income for these procedures and hospitals are instead being overloaded with costly but non-lucrative emergency care. A lot of health care staff are being furloughed. NPR did a piece on it: https://www.npr.org/2020/05/08/852435761/as-hospitals-lose-revenue-thousands-of-health-care-workers-face-furloughs-layoff https://www.npr.org/2020/05/08/852435761/as-hospitals-lose-r...

albroland 6y ago
Thank you for the link. This definitely mirrors what I had seen last year and if that didn't come across it was a failure on my part. That said, I believe a lot of those furloughed employees have since returned: https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/workforce/9-hospitals-bringing-back-furloughed-employees.html https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/workforce/9-hospitals-... It's really hard to find any hard data about rehirings, hence my wondering and wild speculations based on personal experience ;)

fred_is_fred 6y ago

I visited my GP in July. She had a 10% hours cut along with a 10% pay cut on top. People during COVID really stopped going to check-ups and pretty much all elective things were cancelled and that's the bread and butter for them. Even ER visits were down for heart attacks then - people are not using medical care at the rate they were before. That was especially true last spring and summer.