Here is a long commentary written by Cheryl Welch of the Star-News of Wilmington, NC. It's a long, detailed complaint about, well, I'll summarize for you so you won't have to read the whole thing: If only we had less freedom and more government, less people would die.

Now I can't tell if this article is supposed to be in the "news" section of the paper or not, but it's clearly an opinion piece with a few facts carelessly tossed about. The premise is that a woman was choked because her husband choked her while working for a private health facility and if the state had screened him properly, he wouldn't have been working there, and therefore wouldn't have choked his wife.

The article bemoans the fact that this man was accused of a crime and was not immediately fired from his job. Seriously. Yes, the day he was convicted of a crime, he was fired, but that's not good enough for the author of this piece -- he apparently should have been fired when he was simply accused of wrongdoing. I wonder if Ms. Welch applies that principle to her existence, too.

She goes on to complain that nurse's aides, certified by the state, do not have a criminal check done to get certified, but actually DO have a criminal check done before they're hired by the facility. I'm not exactly sure why this is a problem, but Ms. Welch thinks the government should maintain all certification processes and include criminal background checks at the government level, instead of allowing employers access to that information.

I'm not sure exactly why anyone thinks that government can do a better job than private industry. Government has as much a vested interest as private industry, only a worse one -- private industry is limited by money, while government only exists today to create more government.

Instead of increasing regulation, the state should DECREASE nurse's aide regulation -- allow a private group to certify nurse's aides any way they want to. That would even allow MORE THAN ONE registry! It would allow nationwide registries! It would create levels of competition never seen before in nursing. But that would also increase freedom, which big-government supporters like Ms. Welch apparently do not like.

Posted by: Ogre at 11:02 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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