[tacticalturtle]

I really don’t think doctor salaries are the primary difference when they make up less than 10 % of health care costs:

> However, new research by Stanford health economist Maria Polyakova and colleagues — using unique data on physician income — shows that physicians’ personal earnings account for only 8.6 percent of national health-care spending

https://siepr.stanford.edu/news/just-how-much-do-physicians-...

[wat10000]

That’s the thing about American health care costs. We pay so much more than everyone else, but there’s no obvious single thing that costs more, or even a few factors together. It’s a ton of different things all adding up. Which means it’s very hard to fix, because there are so many different things you’d have to fix.

[fhsm]

This is a more comprehensive survey that’s light on methods but from a respected industry watcher with similar conclusions:

https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2...

[sneak]

Doctors are only part of the problem. Nurses and all of the other skilled positions also all suck up huge amounts of money because there are shortages of all of them.

It was bad even before COVID, it’s even worse now. There are tons of regulations prohibiting the significant increase in creating new doctors and nurses (and air traffic controllers, but that’s a different but remarkably similar story).

Limits on new providers, and tons of corrupt regulation keeping people from opening new medical schools, clinics, and hospitals.

A ton of it is simple supply and demand - and the supply side is capped. Go to a place with a functioning competitive market and the prices (and wages) are a fraction of what they are in the US.

[tacticalturtle]

Again like doctors, nurse wages aren’t a major factor in the discrepancy between US healthcare costs and elsewhere. They are a factor, in a death by a thousand cuts situation.

In a source posted by another commenter, their wages are accountable for 5% of the difference.

I also don’t think it’s accurate to say regulations are what’s prohibiting an increase in nurses. They don’t have a government imposed mechanism like residency funding that creates a bottleneck like the one in medical training.

We have a nurse shortage because we have an aging population increasing demand, it’s a tough job, and people are leaving the profession.

[novok]

But why is it a tough job? Partially it's the shift hours, they could offer it with less hours and more nurses for example. But they don't due to undersupply, and on it goes.