KS HB 2524 would cap the wages of contract nurses at long term care facilities. This is problematic for numerous reasons. Nationwide, 70 percent of nursing homes are "for profit" facilities (www.marketplace.org 2021). In no other industry can businesses expand their profits by seeking legislation to cap their worker's wages. Nursing homes run skeleton crews as it is, with difficulty finding anyone (contract or permanent staff) to cover shifts. If this passes, there isn't a travel nurse out there who would pick up a shift at a nursing home ever again. That will leave these places even more short staffed and at risk of neglecting residents or shutting down. This is a slippery slope, because Kansas hospitals will then attempt to cap wages for their contract nurses. If that occurs, most contractors would either wait the situation out and refuse to work at all, or travel over the state line to obtain a higher paying contract. Once again, healthcare facilities and patients lose. If healthcare facility managers want to pull at the heart strings, talking about how they cannot afford travel nurses and that they are at risk of shutting down, I have a better suggestion. Cap CEO salaries. An article published on www.seniorhousingnews.com lists the average hospital CEO salary at over $962,951 annually, with bonuses of $514,486. Average CEOs of nursing homes made between $177,328 to $533,104 ("Long term care executive salaries" Feb 2020). Then you have the CEO of the long term care giant HCR Manorcare making $18.4 million a year according to the Keystone research center. Quit letting these corporate execs attempt to blame their financial problems on the travel nurses who have been at the battle lines for this entire pandemic, many of whom are now being required to work while covid positive! I am asking that you use your good judgement here and do not rule that nurses (and nurses alone) are not entitled to the benefits of a free market and capitalism for the difficult, dangerous work that we do. Healthcare facilities could run for a long time without a CEO. They couldn't run even an hour without nurses.