I'm so sick of this shit. It doesn't matter what your political persuasion is, you've got to admit that this is completely self contradictory:
"shortages in the tens or even hundreds of thousands of nurses, physicians, teachers, engineers, pharmacists, mental health counselors, construction worker and airplane mechanics"
If there is less of something (labor) the value of that thing will increase due to increased demand. It does not matter if they were allocated by government fiat (a communistic thing, funny enough, given the prevalence of H1B as a so-called "capitalist" measure).
More H1Bs and 'helping' companies is more of a planned or managed economy. It's more communist. But the fact is that no amount of societal uplifting that will make an 80IQ citizen a 120IQ citizen so that there's enough doctors or engineers. The only real option is to pay more for it, as a larger incentive to allow those who are smarter to be more likely to pursue it. (After all: as much fun as it is to operate heavy machinery all day, construction still wasn't the career that the smart kids who liked to play into the dirt went into...)