Probably because procedure volume was down, so they canned people who they could. And then got caught off guard when demand increased again suddenly. Same thing happens over and over in manufacturing.
It's inherent when quarterly numbers trump long term stability. If managers are only incentivized to meet short term numbers, they make decisions that are detrimental to the future to meet present-day goals. Our financial markets reward this (though there's a question about why they do this that's open in my mind, as most of the money in the market is invested long-term!), so it trickles down into managerial metrics.
There's a huge bottleneck in training and education of the licensed professionals involved in nursing.
To have a 'truly free market', there wouldn't be government licensing (a similar role would likely be carried out by third party certification).
I don't think that eliminating licensing would improve anything, but the regulation of nurse training absolutely needs to be included in the discussion of the problem.
> if there's a truly free market solution to this issue with hospital staffing.
You are seeing it happen. People do not accept current labor prices for healthcare work, politicians come under political fire for not providing sufficient level of healthcare, politicians increase funding to healthcare to increase pay, possibly requiring increasing taxes if they cannot figure out how to punt them to future generations.
Or insufficient number of voters want to direct more resources to healthcare to those that cannot afford it out of their own pocket, and they get less or lower quality healthcare. Maybe society decides it is not worth the cost of supporting people past 90, or even 80.
There's plenty of people willing to work at the offered salaries, there is a structural problem in the licensing process preventing them from doing so.
A case can be made for doctors who have limited residency spots effectively capping new yearly supply, but what possible argument could there be for nurses other than nurse pay is not high enough to attract more people to nursing?
People changing bedpans get paid $10 to $15 per hour in many states, who wants to do that unless they have zero other options?
How do you know the people not accepted would have made desirable nurses? Surely one would want some minimum standard for the people poking you with needles and administering your healthcare/medicines.
> The trainers that are training are not well compensated.
Health care is so regulated that the word free market doesn't make any sense.
A truely free market solution would be to train people specially to deal with COVID-19 cases and build a specialized hospital to deal with that. It would also bring the cost down.
Any kind of efficient resource allocation relies on accurate predictions. No matter what system you use, free market or otherwise, if reality is constantly defying prediction, or changes too quickly, allocation won't be great.
I wonder if the race to the bottom is inherent in free market or if there's a truly free market solution to this issue with hospital staffing.