US hospitals, even those that are nonprofit organizations, refuse to hire enough nurses. The predictable result is that patients get injured.

Occasionally a patient develops a serious condition that went unnoticed because the nurses were always in a hurry.

I voted against the Massachusetts initiative, despite agreeing with the basic idea, because it seemed to me that putting a specific staffing ratio directly in the law was too rigid. In 20 years that ratio might call for change and would be very hard to change. Also, since the nurse I had known had died, I had no one to ask about whether that number was correct.