[mgleason_3]

Interesting to read that only 33%-50% of hospitals comply with the law and post their prices. If there's one thing this country needs to do it's demand transparency everywhere.

Especially our government. Spending. Salaries. It all needs to be public.

[khuey]

> Especially our government. Spending. Salaries. It all needs to be public.

A lot of it is. In California for example you can go look up any public employee's compensation at https://transparentcalifornia.com/

[pengaru]

W T F

https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2021/gateway-comm...

[SilasX]

WTF about, not just the compensation, but the fact that some of these show a salary of $200k with $2.X million in benefits. Like, what?

https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2021/gateway-comm...

[cecilpl2]

Almost certainly the value of pensions. There are teachers on that list making $65k with "benefits" of 1mm, which is probably the NPV of ~20 years of pension income.

[pengaru]

Doesn't seem to add up though, if you keyword search for "teacher" [0], the results are dominated by GCC with consistently elevated benefits. Once you get out of GCC dominated results, the numbers start looking a lot less surprising - until another GCC entry shows up.

[0] https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?q=teacher

[cecilpl2]

My completely uneducated guess is that GCC reports the entire value of the DB pension as "income" for that year, whereas all other institutions correctly report just the increase in value.

[SilasX]

Yeah but it would only show that year’s gain in pension value.

[shusaku]

This is why transparency is often nothing but a parlor trick. The raw information we are given is useless

[_carbyau_]

This is why transparency is not just a "post it and done" process. It is a conversation.

At least with this much, you have a foundation to ask questions.

[nickip]

Transparent California is also incorrect in a lot of cases. I worked in CA as a seasonal worker and they reported what I would have earned if I worked full time for a year. In reality I only worked at that rate for 3 months making a quarter of what was reported. So I am not sure how much I trust it anymore.

[claytical]

The top salaries in that database match the people's names in this article: https://www.eastcountymagazine.org/east-county-superintenden...

[pengaru]

Not seeing any of the Gateway Community Charter leaderboard on that list.

[Justin_K]

That's lifetime comp.

[screye]

What's up with those million dollar benefits ? What could they possibly be spending those on ?

[lotsofpulp]

Defined benefit pensions and retiree healthcare.

Politicians get to calculate the present value however they want today (which always means understating the real cost), and letting the future deal with the problem and playing catch-up to the real costs.

No one cared about this enough so government employee unions and politicians back then got away with underpaying employees in cash (hence reputation of government pay being low), but then give cops and some others 3% final average pay pay pensions including overtime or just averaging the final 3 or 5 years of pay. I have even seen pension plans just use the final year of pay.

The pensions start at 20 years of service, so you can have people earning a couple hundred thousand in their final years in mid 40s or 50s, and then get an annuity worth $200k * 20 years * .03 per year = $120k per year, and then on top of that some even negotiated cost of living adjustments (currently wrecking Illinois’ taxpayers).

Go ask an insurance agent for a quote for an annuity of $120k starting at age 50 until you die and see what they quote you.

They will probably laugh you out of the room.

Add government doctors, lawyers, university management, etc and the costs explode.

[dd36]

This is why looking at government spending over time is an incomplete picture. If a huge chunk goes to retirees and wasn’t 40 years ago, there’s simply less leftover for everything else.

Tax revenue might be higher than ever but net available for programs is down. Thus, the feeling by many that government must be wasting money.

[dragonwriter]

> If a huge chunk goes to retirees and wasn’t 40 years ago, there’s simply less leftover for everything else.

If you are talking about state governments in the US, that's approximately true.

If you are talking about the federal government, it's not, because the idea of a fixed purse is simply false. Spending and revenue are separate policy decisions that don't constraint each other.

[lotsofpulp]

I do not understand why you are downvoted. It is obviously true the federal government can simply issue new money to pay its debts.

[softwaredoug]

> Especially our government. Spending. Salaries. It all needs to be public.

This is especially useful for valuable gov't employees that want to negotiate a higher salary :) Totally fine by me, but just be aware you may not realize the second order effects. The primary people that care may actually just be the employees for pay fairness

[d4mi3n]

The US government is the last entity that should be playing games with salary negotiations. The G payment schedules are well established and can be updated. If they need to figure out other ways of providing a salary, they can update the existing schedules or make a new set that is also publicly available. If I’m paying taxes to provide a salary for a federal employee, I want that to be recorded, publicly accessible, and for there to be a controller somewhere accountable for how they money is allocated.

[softwaredoug]

Not the US govt. think more state and local. US govt salaries are pretty transparent.

[cheschire]

https://www.fedsdatacenter.com/federal-pay-rates/

A fairly searchable database of individual salaries

[vlovich123]

What is the penalty for non compliance?

[pc86]

CMS just fined some hospital $900k. So it's not nothing.

[cycomanic]

Reading this thread and watching the US news in general, transparency is pretty far down the list of things the US needs.