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Researchers chart path to drastically lower administrative costs of health care

med.stanford.edu

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Re: Researchers chart path to drastically lower administrative costs of health care

#31

Post by e40 »

dboreham wrote: post #21
creaghpatr wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like it's mostly an abstract of something that was published in a journal but they hint at it saying 3 scenarios: simplifying/streamlining individual plans, standardizing plans across all groups ie. more standardization, and a combination of those two things. This would lead to less complexity and administrative overhead which would lead to savings etc.

Or perhaps look at other western countries that don't have any of this vampire squid stuff.

Like Japan that has a published book which contains the prices for all procedures.

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

Re: Researchers chart path to drastically lower administrative costs of health care

#32

Post by EvanAnderson »

HEmanZ wrote: post #16
syops wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bottleneck is not the number of people with an MD. The bottleneck is the number of residency programs. These are funded by Medicare and I believe they are not profitable for hospitals.

I don't know how residencies could not be profitable for hospitals. Hospitals receive something like $120k/yr per resident, then work residents 80+ hours/week at $50k/yr pay, amounting to right around minimum wage (for my city). Residents do a tremendous amount of work in supporting the hospital, so much so that a single resident getting deathly ill and needing to stay home (e.g a surgery resident getting covid, whic…

The residency slots are so limited right now because the AMA lobbied hard against expanding them in the 1990s (fearing a "glut" of doctors).

Edit: Every time this comes up I go down a rabbit hole of looking for an article from the mid-to-late 90s where a medical lobbyist spoke about how doctors would be forced to leave the profession and do "mundane" jobs like driving cabs if the residency slots weren't capped. It did not paint the lobby in a good light, and I've love to see it trotted out today. I never have been able to find the article online. If somebody with better search-engine-fu than me can find it I'd be greatful.

Re: Researchers chart path to drastically lower administrative costs of health care

#33

Post by HDMI_Cable »

rscho wrote: post #13
jostmey wrote: post #2

I agree with the three issues they identify driving up costs. But I fear “Medicare for All” won't fix all the issues, which go much deeper. For example, the US has extremely high standards restricting who can practice medicine compared to the rest of world, limiting the supply of doctors and artificially driving up their demand. There is a need for standards, but perhaps the AMA has too much political influence. Like…

> For example, the US has extremely high standards restricting who can practice medicine compared to the rest of world Rest of the world, yes. Rest of the developed world, not at all. The major difference is that becoming a doc in the US is much more expensive than pretty much anywhere else. You could also argue it's proportionally harder because of the more numerous competitors. But on an absolute level of knowledge…

It really is harder in the US. The standards are much higher in the US than anywhere else. The US only accepts doctors who went to Canadian or American medical schools. And then on top of that, it is much harder to get into a medical school here in NA than practically anywhere else, except maybe India. I know that in the UK you can go directly from high school, meanwhile in the US & Canada you need a 515 MCAT, 3.7 GPA, and lab time to even get in to a mid-range school.

Re: Researchers chart path to drastically lower administrative costs of health care

#34

Post by sjg007 »

tgb wrote: post #7
syops wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bottleneck is not the number of people with an MD. The bottleneck is the number of residency programs. These are funded by Medicare and I believe they are not profitable for hospitals.

There's some good reason to think that residencies are profitable: in 2019, 550 of them were auctioned off for $55 million in a controversial bankruptcy case. https://www.inquirer.com/business/hahnemann-university-hospi...

So residences are basically taxi medallions. Interesting.

Re: Researchers chart path to drastically lower administrative costs of health care

#35

Post by warmfuzzykitten »

syops wrote: post #3
jostmey wrote: post #2

I agree with the three issues they identify driving up costs. But I fear “Medicare for All” won't fix all the issues, which go much deeper. For example, the US has extremely high standards restricting who can practice medicine compared to the rest of world, limiting the supply of doctors and artificially driving up their demand. There is a need for standards, but perhaps the AMA has too much political influence. Like…

The bottleneck is not the number of people with an MD. The bottleneck is the number of residency programs. These are funded by Medicare and I believe they are not profitable for hospitals.

A helpful link on this subject. Apparently, medical schools in the US are now allowing more graduates. Not sure about profitability of residency programs, but certainly not all hospitals are teaching hospitals and the latter are federally subsidized.

https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/us-medical-school-enrollm...

Re: Researchers chart path to drastically lower administrative costs of health care

#36

Post by KoftaBob »

jostmey wrote: post #2

I agree with the three issues they identify driving up costs. But I fear “Medicare for All” won't fix all the issues, which go much deeper. For example, the US has extremely high standards restricting who can practice medicine compared to the rest of world, limiting the supply of doctors and artificially driving up their demand. There is a need for standards, but perhaps the AMA has too much political influence. Like…

They state early in the article that this research details how to tackle those three issues without resorting to Medicare for All.

Re: Researchers chart path to drastically lower administrative costs of health care

#38

Post by gumby »

jostmey wrote: post #2

I agree with the three issues they identify driving up costs. But I fear “Medicare for All” won't fix all the issues, which go much deeper. For example, the US has extremely high standards restricting who can practice medicine compared to the rest of world, limiting the supply of doctors and artificially driving up their demand. There is a need for standards, but perhaps the AMA has too much political influence. Like…

> For example, the US has extremely high standards restricting who can practice medicine compared to the rest of world, limiting the supply of doctors...

Really? Can you give some examples? There are a lot of immigrant physicians in the USA.

An anecdotal counter example: my mother is a physician with medical licenses from Australia, UK and the USA (obviously two have lapsed) and though she is quite critical of countries X and Y and positive about country Z she has never expressed any such opinion or said that one might be tougher than another, which is exactly the kind of thing she would point out.

Re: Researchers chart path to drastically lower administrative costs of health care

#40

Post by 238475235243 »

DonnyV wrote: post #29

Worthless paper, administrative costs is only a piece of the many issues with US "Healthcare". Medicare For All is the better and cheaper way forward. No one ever talks about what is the value all these Health Insurance companies bring? The whole point of their existence when they were created was to control costs. Obviously they have failed miserably. Medicare For All handles lowering or eliminating student loans fo…

Or we could make it legal to open hospitals, or charge differential pricing based on the time of day... you know, basic stuff?

Most people have no idea how captured healthcare is. There's no competition, indeed most healthcare is government granted monopolies already.

Having lived in countries with "free" healthcare, that isn't all it's cracked up to be either. A good example of cost cutting: just make the disease illegal, like ADHD in the UK. If it doesn't exist, nobody can claim medication for it. Problem solved.

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