[digikata]

Prices for care in Japan are basically systematically set by government committees.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_system_in_Japan

In contrast, in the US, there are 16 non-medical, mostly billing personnel per doctor.

[Red_Leaves_Flyy]

Can you cite that number? Even pulling numbers out of thin air for receptions, call center, it, hospitality, food, nursing, etc I find it hard to get thathigh.

This study puts the billing staff to doctors ratio at 0.67.

https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.28.4....

[tptacek]

Where does that figure come from?

[digikata]

Its from a book, Code Blue: Inside Americas Medical Industrial Complex, by Mike Magee. The author is a Doctor and distinguished medical academic and past hospital executive.

[tptacek]

I believe you, but it's hard to square that ratio with the actual administrative overhead of US health care, which is under 15%.

[undersuit]

Billing Personnel to Doctors seems to ignore the squads of Nurses and maybe it also ignores the Doctors in Residency?

[digikata]

The book contains many references, but it's dense. I thought admin overhead tended to go to 15% because of ACA provisions of 85% spending requirement on direct care? I would likely have to do a fair bit of digging to compare how the scope is defined exactly vs an ACA definition. Makes for something of a perverse incentive if the companies want/need to route additional absolute dollars into their service depts - but I don't know how much it actually gets bent in that direction.