This is just dead wrong. Physician "services" make up less than 15% of healthcare expenditures in the US as of 2020(this is counting money that goes towards running clinics and other outpatient services overhead, actual salaries are closer to 8%). Nursing is another 10-15% at most. Growth of administration in hospitals and healthcare over the past 30 years has vastly outpaced growth in physicians(and nursing for that matter.)
If you removed every doctor and nurse's salary in the country in the blink of an eye(you know, the ones that you actually go to the clinic or hospital to see and provide the actual healthcare) you would still have >70% of expenditures remaining. It would be a pretty worthless 70% too since there would be no diagnosis or treatment of disease which is kinda the whole point of, you know, healthcare.
Companies like UHC hide their profits by using their insurance arm to funnel money into their own hospitals by making them "preferred hospitals" in network and basically double, triple, or quadruple dipping on that money. So you are paying them a premium, then visiting their clinics/hospitals and paying copays and deductibles. Then they use that insurance to pay another portion to their hospital. Then that hospital or clinic uses that money to purchase drugs through their pharmacy benefit manager Optum. They've also been starting to hire doctors themselves so then they also get to keep the difference between what the doctor makes and the salary they pay them. They are getting a cut every step of the way.
So yes they make 6% after they've paid themselves a few times with your money.
It's not dead wrong. You just refuse to accept the truth because you want more job security and a higher salary. How can you not acknowledge your own bias on this topic? Maybe have some humility and consider that you're living in denial and spreading lies because it makes you sleep easier at night. Clinicians do valuable work, but it's not so valuable that patients should go bankrupt for it...
The vast majority of support staff is underpaid. These include nurses, radiology, lab, respiratory therapy etc. if you think Doctors are overpaid you should look at the amount of years of schooling they have to have and the average amount of debt they come out of school with.
Lol the entitlement and narcissism... Patients don't deserve to go bankrupt to pay the salaries of healthcare workers. The cost of schooling is a personal choice and patients shouldn't be on the hook for it.
"The cost of schooling is a personal choice and patients shouldn't be on the hook for it."
Of course they are? If you see a lawyer, the cost of their schooling is factored into the price you pay for services. If you pay an engineer, the cost of their schooling is factored into the price you pay for services. It is expensive to educate people with doctorates. Not to mention the cost of schooling may be a personal choice but if you want doctors in your society somebody is going to be paying for that cost so it'll be a factor in cost regardless.
Fortunately like we discussed above, the majority of the cost patients pay is in fact not for doctors so for the most part the patient is not "on the hook" for for a meaningful cost.
No... I see how you're trying to connect the dots, but unfortunately, you seem to have only a cursory understanding of economics. The salaries of lawyers and engineers are far more influenced by market forces because they operate in relatively free markets compared to healthcare. Also, no one says to themselves, "I'm paying my lawyer or engineer X amount of dollars because they worked hard in school and deserve it." That's an extremely childish worldview... It's well known that healthcare is a perversely distorted market and healthcare workers benefit greatly from a laundry list of curated market distortions including artificial labor shortages, a lack of price transparency, manufactured information asymmetry, institutionalized medical paternalism, etc...
Go somewhere else when you need medical care. You don’t deserve to be treated if you think the staff caring for you are overpaid. There is a lot wrong with healthcare in the US, the salaries of the patient care staff is not one of them, except perhaps that many are overworked and underpaid.
You do not work in healthcare and are very mis-informed in understanding where the actual costs lie.
Thanks for proving my point beyond a shadow of a doubt. The narcissism is unreal. If someone points out an inconvenient truth or pushes back on the narratives y'all tell yourselves in your echo chambers-- then, you tell them to go die in a ditch... It's textbook DARVO.
Keep living in denial. More and more patients are waking up to the truth and serious change is right around the corner. The latest round of Medicaid reforms is just the tip of the iceberg.
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u/Concordiat 12d ago edited 12d ago
This is just dead wrong. Physician "services" make up less than 15% of healthcare expenditures in the US as of 2020(this is counting money that goes towards running clinics and other outpatient services overhead, actual salaries are closer to 8%). Nursing is another 10-15% at most. Growth of administration in hospitals and healthcare over the past 30 years has vastly outpaced growth in physicians(and nursing for that matter.)
If you removed every doctor and nurse's salary in the country in the blink of an eye(you know, the ones that you actually go to the clinic or hospital to see and provide the actual healthcare) you would still have >70% of expenditures remaining. It would be a pretty worthless 70% too since there would be no diagnosis or treatment of disease which is kinda the whole point of, you know, healthcare.
Companies like UHC hide their profits by using their insurance arm to funnel money into their own hospitals by making them "preferred hospitals" in network and basically double, triple, or quadruple dipping on that money. So you are paying them a premium, then visiting their clinics/hospitals and paying copays and deductibles. Then they use that insurance to pay another portion to their hospital. Then that hospital or clinic uses that money to purchase drugs through their pharmacy benefit manager Optum. They've also been starting to hire doctors themselves so then they also get to keep the difference between what the doctor makes and the salary they pay them. They are getting a cut every step of the way.
So yes they make 6% after they've paid themselves a few times with your money.
This is a very helpful graph.