[CamperBob2]

The notion that the providers are the ones sucking up all the money in the healthcare industry is certainly... novel.

The majority of people in this particular industry have nothing to do with actually providing health care, just as the majority of employees at a major university have never stood in front of a blackboard.

[shaldengeki]

Here's a 14 year-old series showing that providers are the biggest chunk of the overspending in the system:

https://web.archive.org/web/20210421025041/http://theinciden...

[CamperBob2]

In the United States, physician salaries were 6.5 times GDP per capita for specialists and 4.1 times GDP per capita for generalists.

(Shrug) I'm OK with the notion that doctors contribute somewhere between 4 and 7 times more value than your average schlub driving a bus, and I'm OK with paying them accordingly.

Now, how much do the administrators, insurance-company execs, and other noncontributors make?

[tptacek]

If you look, you can find pie charts that make the point I'm making directly, so no, I don't think it's novel.

[adgjlsfhk1]

The problem with our health insurance system is that it's insidious. Our doctors spend ~25% of their time filling out information that only gets filled out to try to get insurance to not deny the claims, and hospitals have entire billing departments whose only job is dealing with the billing of our stupid ass system. The problem isn't just the ~15% that the insurance companies take directly, it's that since their percentage of profit is capped, they work to raise prices of the entire health care system so that their 15% cut is bigger. Insurance companies literally negotiate pharma companies to charge a larger amount to uninsured people so they get to take a bigger cut.

[tptacek]

Is that why they make as much as 3x what doctors in other G20 countries make? Hazard pay for the paperwork?

[adgjlsfhk1]

That's not all of the reason (some of it is higher cost of living, compare G20 vs G7 and the gap narrows a bunch). Some of the reason is because of US education costs, and immigration policies that make it harder for people to come and work in healthcare.

[tptacek]

Does it? Average physician cash comp in Germany is 75kEU, and average cash comp in the US is something like $350kUSD. Note here I'm using one of the largest and soundest economies as a comparison, and one with substantial uptake of private health insurance.

[CamperBob2]

If I look, I can find pie charts demonstrating that the Moderna COVID vaccine provides 8 dB worse 5G reception than the Pfizer shot.

So, yeah, you'll have to do a little better than that.

[tptacek]

No, I don't.

[lantry]

You can't come to the conversation with "everyone else is being unreasonable" and then not cite your sources.

[tptacek]

If what I was backing with "pie charts" was "everyone else is being unreasonable", sure, but that's not what I said. Go look it up. Zero out all insurer costs. What percentage of health care costs do we save?

[CamperBob2]

There's a lot more than just "Insurer costs" and "Doctors' BMW payments" in the pie chart. Again, relatively little of it has to do with actually treating injuries and illnesses. And that's not even getting into the massive market distortions associated with forcing the concept of "insurance" into a market where virtually every single customer will eventually need to file multiple claims.

You usually come up with better arguments than this. We all have off days, I guess.