The hit film about overworked nurses that's causing alarm across Europe

> I think there is a cultural problem about facing up to death

It definitely is culture problem, just look on average police chase in USA followed by a news helicopter. The moment when suspect crashes, news camera will start wildly zooming off and panning away. Why is that? You don't want to see the end of chase, where a guy is getting crushed by momentum of his car, while he could stop and get arrested anytime during the chase? Show the consequences of his actions and tell that if he would not try to run, he would likely be still alive. Arrested, maybe little bit beaten by the cops, but alive.

How much of that is The Machine, and how much of that is kids & grandkids not wanting grandma to pass away?

For what it's worth, when my grandma was in the hospital with congestive heart failure, the surgeon was very clear with her and with us that "do nothing, and die" was very much an option, and a choice that she and she alone could make.

People really need to consider the alternative though. I've seen a lot of old people who were desperate to depart this world but whose younger relatives wouldn't let them.

At least in the US, in general we talk to the family about code status "Do you want your loved one to receive CPR if their heart stops?". We can make them DNR/DNI. Then next discussion would be hospice. They would have a hospital bed sent to their home, be discharged with a weekly nurse visit and doctor available by phone/text, and get minimal medications focused on minimizing suffering.

In my experience it is rarely the patient making this choice. Much more often the children, who are often making a big show of how much more they love mom or dad compared to the other sibs.

Medicare is not insurance. The word "insurance" has a specific meaning, and the traditional Medicare fee-for-service program doesn't meet that definition. (There are a variety of other payers or health plans in the US healthcare system which fill a similar role to insurance but are not actually insurance.)

> One should be glad that such a large sector of economy - healthcare - has a great stable demand and a great labor market.

This is not the tourism industry, a “great stable demand” is sick and suffering people.

The hospital has limited resources, which are being taken up by people who have no hope of getting better (they ain’t getting younger). A push to do everything we can to stop them from dying buys us what? A few more months of pain and delirium before we reach the same result.

> so what? It is on their dime, not yours.

Actually in Europe it is on a dime of a taxpayer so also his.

> rising faster than inflation for several years

Over here in Canada healthcare spending has been rising faster than general inflation more or less continuously since the 1960s. Seems to be generally true of many wealthy countries. More tech and therapies. And an ageing population. And probably other factors.

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Health_care_cost_r...

It's not just costs.

It is patient (and relatives) expectations.

It is knowing that any perceived issue could result in litigation.

It is that management may well have never 'worked the floor' so have no insight in to what happens.

There may well just not be the time to do all the tasks that someone else had decided needed to be done.

It's the baby boom. If level of care stays the same then at some point one third of the labour force is projected to have to work in healthcare, it's not possible.

This will continue to happen as long as automation in health care is slower than in other sectors. It's due to Baumol's Cost Disease: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect

The same is true for other sectors that struggle with automation like education.

> so we have to resort to these "invisible" cost cutting measures to try and stay afloat.

Yeah, this is the narative. In reality we only need increased profits.

In CA, USA. We got a 20% hike in healthcare prices for the renewal we just got this month. 20% is insane.

To anyone here open minded enough to give it a shot, I encourage you to read The Real Anthony Fauci, or at least the first chapter. To people who feel resistance: what is the worst that can happen? If you after reading disagree then your brain will soon forget about it anyway so nothing is lost.

Healthcare costs have risen faster than inflation since the 1960s, when the government got involved with providing "free" healthcare.

Before then, costs tracked inflation.

Health care costs that are not provided "free" by the government have fallen, such as lasik eye surgery.

Averages as well as you say are useless. You know this, so I don’t know why you bring averages up. I specifically mentioned the most common salary, not the average or the mean, which are completely skewed.

You should also research the salaries of other people who also have a “bachelor’s degree” as you call it. That is, if they get employment and don’t have to emigrate.

Which country are you talking about, and who is "we"? In the USA, Congress constrains the number of new doctors trained every year not to keep salaries high but rather to limit Medicare expenses. If Medicare beneficiaries can't get an appointment due to a doctor shortage then no claim will be submitted to CMS. Most of the funding for residency programs comes from Medicare, and every year there are medical students who graduate with the MD but are unable to practice medicine because they don't get matched to a residency program.

At one point the AMA did lobby Congress to limit the number of doctors but they reversed their position on that issue long ago.

https://savegme.org/

Fewer, for sure.

Not to mention they work for the state so they are guaranteed to have lots of free days by law and their work hours are always respected.

In the US, we have two tiers of nurse below the 4 year degree and one tier above, and we still have a major nursing shortage.

You can get training to be a certified nursing assistant in just a few weeks here.

At least in the US, nursing does not require a 4 year degree. You can become an RN with an associates degree. A 2 year nursing degree has one of the highest returns on investment of any training program (especially if you go to community college). Ivy Tech CC in Indiana and WGU both have nursing programs with great returns. Keep in mind, nursing is not an easy path and has a super high burnout rate. It's a tough and demanding job.

Other professions with a great return on training are HVAC, electrician, plumber, robotics/logic systems (CAM, conveyors, etc.). These are especially high paying if you focus on commercial and industrial.

So are you hoping to be treated by nurses who are worse academically than the ones we have now? Or are you hoping that "others" will be treated by them while increased supply depresses wages for the good ones that you think will treat you? Also being a nurse is a very hard job, most people wouldn't last a year as an ER nurse in the US.

you usually need a 4 year degree

In the US, it's not worth going into because you have to put in hundreds of hours of clinicals which are unpaid, yet just as useful to the employer as a job. Unpaid internships are illegal, yet these are legal and mandatory.

That doesn't help if we don't have money to hire qualified nurses.

Cuts down on health costs but also increases life span, so you have the issue with the number of elderly citizens vs number of working citizens who can provide care. That needs to be tackled too somehow.

This is good to do for its own sake, but on a large scale it does not decrease health care costs: it makes people live longer, but they will still ultimately need the kind of end-of-life care where the majority of health care costs come from. Those costs don't go down for healthier people, and it might even increase health care spending on net if it takes people longer to die.

That definitely increases outcomes and QALY but it only is cost neutral or saves costs if you also more tightly ration low-cost-effectiveness care down the road that ends up usually being near end-of-life, which is where A LOT of current spending is.

This is rational on a broad social level but is very difficult of a change to implement.

I think most of the increase in healthcare costs is coming from elderly people (because people are living longer). So while otherwise a good thing, I'm not sure that will help this particular problem.

Obesity is currently only getting worse and many of these sicknesses are already irreversible in people. This also does not do anything about ageing

too late for most of the burden

good luck -- https://www.npr.org/2025/07/27/nx-s1-5481828/rfk-jr-uspstf-a...

Low interest rates are trivially solvable. Declining productivity seems entirely made up.

>Make that a discussion with the local politics.

There is nothing more irrelevant than addressing large scale social issues in local politics. Besides not once in my life have I seen politics improve anything, politics seems to attract the dumbest and most self righteous types of people, who care about nothing but their self image. My time on earth is limited and much too precious to spent it in the company of politicians or just people invested in politics. No Thanks!

Yeah, also over here in Finland the amount of money our public sector spends on stuff like Microsoft licenses is insane. Then there's lots of other craziness, like buying a very expensive and totally unsuitable American healthcare management system from Epic, and then spending lots of money on license fees and customizing it for local purposes (the end result also sucks, and is universally hated by healthcare staff).

I'm not sure whether it's a result incompetence, corruption or both, but massive amount of money is wasted on IT solutions that could be implemented more cheaply in-house, or at least by European companies.

Absolutely. Especially the old think that they deserve unlimited funding, even when they have failed totally at creating the conditions which would make that funding possible and now their costs are spread over an ever declining population of young people.