Yeah, also it’s outrageous because American style/insurance based healthcare generates extra large profit margins and the system doesn’t even capitalise on that by transferring the surplus down to the nurses - the actual legionaries of the Healthcare machine.

And some few people try to argue that nursing is easy, so anyone could step into the role (it’s not) - but even if that were the case, it’s:

• A “human contact” role; things like flight attendancy, car salespeople and many other things, they get duly compensated just because they provide the human face in a system that would otherwise be massively uncomfortable to interact with.
• A death facing role; anyone who has to see people dying deserves a lot of compensation for the psychological/mental health risk - NO job has this higher than nurses. Especially if we count people literally transitioning from alive to dead. Jobs like Morticians, Train drivers, Firefighters and soldiers are highly compensated along for the same principle.
• A high risk role; you risk probation constantly if you do something wrong or are thought to have done something wrong. You have to challenge doctors and other nurses on their decisions and be right when you do that.
• Communicating with disabled and foreign people role - it’s just tough. People all across industries are paid more to work with the disabled and try to communicate with foreign language speakers. Nurses are paid their same basic rate.
• Possibly a healthcare advisory role? We tend to consider advise giving and mentorship as a quality worthy of salary raise, both in the private and public sectors.
• on that note, In the case of my country, UK, it’s effectively a public servant role. Now while this does have favourable retirement conditions, it would, in bureaucratic roles, provide exceptionally bloated salaries for what the job at hand really is. Sigh.
• When they strike, healthcare is harder to access. If they were organised they could strike a lot (or do semi-strikes so as to not let patients die). I imagine that the US system in some part works against this. We get a lot of NHS strikes in the UK.