Nurses Strike for Staffing While Hospitals Hoard Billions
The Independent reports thousands of New York nurses are on strike as flu season hits, framing it as a critical strain on healthcare. What they conveniently gloss over is why nurses are striking: dangerous understaffing. Hospitals like Mount Sinai and Montefiore, while crying poverty to nurses, sit on substantial financial reserves. Montefiore alone reported over $300 million in operating income
in 2022, and its CEO took home over $7 million in 2021. Mount Sinai isn't far behind, with its executives also enjoying multi-million dollar compensation packages, according to public filings. One might wonder if the 'crisis' of nurse understaffing is truly an affordability issue for these institutions, or a calculated choice prioritizing C-suite pockets over patient safety. The same media outlets
that decry the 'burden' of striking nurses rarely investigate the balance sheets of these 'non-profit' hospital empires. Perhaps if these institutions weren't so adept at accumulating wealth and compensating their top brass, they could magically find the funds for the safe staffing nurses are literally begging for. But then again, that might require asking inconvenient questions about who truly
profits when our healthcare system is stretched thin.