Massachusetts residents, what do you think is important for voters to consider regarding Question 1 and nurse to patient ratios?

YOU Should consider keeping politics OUT of here.  What a great way to lose subscribers.

My first thought is the less government oversight, the better.  Whenever I see the word mandatory, alarms go off.  

That being said, the argument for #1 sound good.  It 'should' cause hospitals to hire more staff if needed, but opponents say there could be long waiting lines and lower quality of staff additions.  

Truth is, every industry has some sort of workforce management system where it can help predict and staff peak times.  Even in the medical field you can predict which months and/or times in which you will need staff.  If major events happen that cause an increase, hospitals have emergency procedures for getting staffed up quickly.

I'm not seeing a reason for mandating a nurse to patient ratio.  If this is truly an issue, how come we don't need to mandate doctor to patient or doctor to nurse ratio.  Perhaps, instead of government mandates, we should have the governing bodies of hospitals or insurance companies put the guidelines out there and penalize them if they don't follow.

Vote NO on Ballot Question #1. This bill would mandate certain patient-RN ratios. It takes the decision making away from the nursing staff. The unintended consequences include:  closure of hospitals, closure of programs and services, and long wait in the Emergency Department. These things will happen because you can't regulate the flow of patients as people come when they are sick or need help. This would cause the ratios to be violated and be very costly to hospitals.  The is bad for hospitals and wrong for MA. They implemented a similar measure in California. After many years, there has been no demonstrable increase in quality for all the money they have spent!

It proposes more nurses, but they've been skirting the issue of how much this will cost hospital, small community hospitals will not be able to afford the extra cost and will either need to minimize their services or close down all together, this does not help the care of patients of those communities, and bigger hospitals will need to take on all these communities, so wait times that can now be crazy will be out much worse, all in all I just don't see where better patient care comes in with considering this.  We'll go from where we are now to having to travel further and further away for care and when we get there the wait times are going to be ridiculous.

I'm voted early and I voted Yes because my nurse friends say that something has to change because of the understaffing of nurses and the number of patients each nurse has to care for is dangerous for patients. Is it perfect? No, but nurses say a yes vote shows that change is warranted, and the terms can be revised later.  A no vote means no change, status quo, and it's not good for patients.  They do fear that greedy administrators will choose to cut corners on nursing aides, etc., rather than salary cuts for higher ups.  But something needs to change.

No on 1 would allow hospitals to remain indifferent to the work overload that the nurses have - the nurses are the primary caregivers to the patients, and if they are stretched too thin then they can not provide the care patients need - no  on 1 would allow administration to continue raking in the profits from insurance companies, while they are breaking the backs of the nurses that bust their butts day after day.  If you care about quality hospital treatment, vote yes on 1.

Write In Tom Blandford for State Rep. in the 6th Middlesex Dist Of Framingham. Massachusetts shouldn’t just be a one party system! I’m voting no on 1 but yes on 2 and yes on 3. I think the less government interference the better. Let businesses and other entities decide what’s best for them. You don’t want them in your business with all the regulations then let the hospitals figure it for themselves. It’s called a democracy for a reason, free enterprise. Ronald Reagan said the only involvement that the government should have with the people is when they buy a postage stamp! Government isn’t the answer to our problems government is the problem! 

I am voting YES because I support workers and this is a step in the right direction. It might not be perfect, but we need to support our nurses, our teachers and our workers, not big management, health insurance companies and more. There's no reason a country as rich as America can't put reasonable limits on the number of patients nurses see. It's good for nurses and patients.

This is a terrible piece of legislation. 1st, I am on the advisory boards of Blue Cross Blue Shield and they are already toying with significant increases to try to pay for this thing. Also, there's a shortage of nurses. Where are they going to get them? How are the ancillary facility providers going to afford this ? I can go on and on and I know this is a sensitive topic but I am a firm no on this topic. We can't afford it. The independent assessment of the cost from the state puts it at almost one billion dollars. Absurd.